Introduction

Three o’clock a.m. You just sit down and drink a cup of coffee when the phone rings. It is the ED: 10 min ago a man was admitted with hypotension, fever and leukopenia associated with low platelet count and abnormal coagulation tests. More or less an hour ago you visited another patient with ever-decreasing hemoglobin values in whom the most common sources of bleeding have been excluded. You are blaming yourself because you failed to buy a textbook of hematology you saw at a congress a couple of weeks ago and the hospital administration because a hematologist will be available only after 9.00 a.m. In the meanwhile, you are expected to keep these patients alive till someone with a more in-depth knowledge of hematological disease will arrive to help you and your colleagues. © Springer-Verlag Italia 2015.