It is with a profound feeling of loss that Portuguese Intensivists mourn the loss of Dr. Jordi Mancebo.

Director of the Intensive Care Department at the Hospital of Santa Creu and Sant Pau in Barcelona, Cataluña, he was an associate professor at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and visiting professor at the Mayo Clinic, Denver Health Medical Center, Loyola University of Chicago, at the National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Yale University School of Medicine, Mc Gill University in Montreal and the University of Toronto among others. As a result he did multiple research stints at the Service de Réanimation Médicale at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Henri Mondor in Créteil and at the Centre Hospitalier Université in Montréal. He was Honorary Member of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine due to his contributions to the field and to the Society.

A prolific researcher, author, and teacher, he was responsible for teaching many of us in his preferred fields of respiratory failure, mechanical ventilation and ventilator weaning.

Deeply involved with other Scientific Societies, such as the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the Pan-American and Iberian Federation of Intensive and Critical Care medicine, Jordi was also a close friend of the Portuguese Society of Intensive Care Medicine, both directly and indirectly, either as a frequent speaker or teacher at our events or in receiving many of us in his department to learn.

From the late 90s he was deeply involved in the Mediterranean meetings on Non-Invasive Ventilation (NIV) which were organized in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France. In this forum both intensivists and pulmonologists from each county joined forces to discuss, on a yearly basis, the state of the art of NIV, of which Jordi was a great enthusiast and pioneer.

Kind, modest, “friend of his friend”, highly intelligent, his qualities made him the role-model for many young (and not-so-young) intensivists. A standard too high for many of us.

Now, though he is no longer physically among us, I am sure that he will be always be alive in our memories, and he will often be with us when we are faced with difficult patients.Fins sempre, Jordi.