It is with great honor and pleasure that we introduce to our readers the inaugural issue of Clinical and Experimental Emergency Medicine (CEEM). CEEM is the official peer-reviewed, open-access, quarterly journal of the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine. CEEM will focus on both basic and clinical research of emergency medicine including pathophysiology, epidemiology, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and simulation. CEEM accepts editorials, original articles, reviews, letters to the editor, case reports, and interesting images in related areas. CEEM will be of interest to healthcare professionals in acute care and emergency medicine, pediatric emergency medicine, emergency medical services, emergency procedures, cardiology, neurology, resuscitation, trauma, and education. CEEM is one of the only journals that covers both basic, preclinical and clinical research fields entirely focusing on acute care and emergency medicine. Recognizing the widespread impact of electronic open access journals and the need to contain costs, CEEM will only be published in electronic form.
Building on its strengths [1-3], the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine is excited to introduce this new, English language journal. While the journal is sponsored by the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine, it is intended to be a global forum for emergency and acute care practitioners and researchers from all over the world.
In each issue of CEEM, we will also include 1–2 state of the art review articles written by worldwide experts in their field, both from within and without emergency medicine. The articles in this inaugural issue are representative of the wide diversity of emergency medicine and acute care and are a good example of what is yet to come. There is a contemporary review article on sepsis as well as two additional articles demonstrating the impact of timely antibiotics on outcomes in severe sepsis and septic shock and the poor awareness and knowledge regarding sepsis among the general public. In the area of cardiac arrest, one article confirms the importance of therapeutic hypothermia while another questions the detrimental effects of hyperoxemia on survival and neurological outcomes. Environmental injuries are also addressed in a review article on burns, a study on the effects of therapeutic hypothermia in a rat model of burns, and the use of an external cooling device to treat heat stroke victims. This issue also contains a practical article on ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia for pain control in elderly patients in the emergency department (ED) with hip fractures.
It is our intention to be a global, international journal, which attracts some of the best papers in emergency and acute care medicine. The current issue includes articles from Korea, Belgium, Brazil, and the United States reflecting this global nature. Within the next few years, we plan to apply for inclusion of the journal in the prestigious Science Citation Index. In order to enhance our success, we have put together a distinguished international editorial board that includes some of the most prominent thought leaders and researchers in the fields of emergency medicine and acute care.
It is our hope that CEEM will be of interest to you, our readers, leading to a better understanding of emergency and acute care medicine while improving patient outcomes.