This special series on “Recent Advances in Critical Emergency Medicine: From Pathophysiology to Clinical Practice” is edited by Athanasios Chalkias.

The principle motivation of this special series is to expand the role of physicians into the state-of-the-art Critical Emergency Medicine and improve the care of patients in the first minutes to hours of their critical illness. I also believe that it will stimulate high-quality research that will further improve the in-hospital management and resuscitation of extremely critically ill patients.