therapies, lung recruitment manoeuvres and extracorporeal oxygenation and decarboxylation? What are their indications, and how are they best applied in clinical practice? What are the principles of artificial ventilation in patients with obstructive lung diseases or patients with interstitial lung diseases? This handbook provides concise information that is useful at the bedside for safe ventilation in patients with different lung diseases, written by recognised experts. A prerequisite for safe invasive ventilation is adequate respiratory monitoring. Clinicians have several techniques available at the bedside, including pulse oximetry, chest radiography and CT, and lung ultrasound, but also more sophisticated techniques, such as electrical impedance tomography and oesophageal pressure measurements. Experts in this field describe the principles of these techniques, possible indications and pitfalls. This will help the clinician to choose the appropriate monitoring technique for invasively ventilated patients under different clinical conditions. Last but not least, the process of liberating a patient from invasive ventilation, i.e. weaning, requires much attention. How can partially supported modes or automated modes help here? And what if a patient fails to wean? When can a tracheostomy be helpful? Especially in awake, spontaneously breathing patients, it could be important to monitor patient–ventilator interactions, respiratory mechanics and breathing efforts. Although many scientific papers have been published about weaning from invasive ventilation, very few provide clinical guidance about how to set the ventilator in a weaning patient. Experts in the field of ventilator weaning provide useful recommendations about how to ventilate patients during the weaning process and a practical approach to the difficult to wean patient. All the of above is covered in the chapters in this book that all follow a similar approach: providing basic background information, helpful graphics, a summary of the evidence, and finally a list for further reading. To finish, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the authors that have contributed to this book – they are the experts and the knowledge-base that drives this book. Selection of authors for this book was by an invitation to the members of Assembly 2 of the European Respiratory Society (ERS), made during the ERS International Congress in Paris, France in 2018. Both early career members and senior members responded enthusiastically and spent their valuable time writing these chapters for you. We would also like to thank the ERS publications office for their support and hard work to complete this ambitious project. And thank you, dear reader, for picking up this handbook. We hope you enjoy reading it and that it helps you to improve your understanding of the basics of invasive ventilation. After reading this book, you will spend more time at the bedside applying what you learned from the