The treatment of surgical emergencies is a big challenge for the surgeons even today. In an emergency the patient will be admitted to surgery (or to ER) after the acute onset of quite often life threatening symptoms without any tests, and to find the diagnosis is the task of the surgeon. The assessment of symptoms and complaints, the analysis of the results of different examinations must lead to the correct diagnosis or at least to a decision whether urgent surgery is necessary.

To deal with such patients is an important part of general medical education as well, because while performing any medical practice representatives of any specialities can meet emergency surgical patients as first point of contact. It is important for them to send the patient to the right place as soon as possible. An emergency patient's life may depend on this first correct decision. We strongly recommend our book to medical students, but we like to see it as a good guide during specialist training as well. Emergency surgery is an every day problem, and to be able to provide correct treatment needs deep knowledge gained through lengthy (in a great part hands on) training on this field. Our main aim is to help in this process. (Pál Ondrejka)