All too often the fruits of modern medicine are blighted by avoidable infection when patients on whom technical skills have been lavished die or lose a benefit they might otherwise have enjoyed. Although such a loss is expensive both in terms of human tragedy and of wasted time and resources, scant attention is paid to its prevention compared with that which goes into the development and use of the advanced techniques which so often bring infections in their train. The intravascular route for biochemical. pharmacological, nutritional and other physiological support and monitoring necessary to...