Thermodynamic consistency of the equation of state of strongly interacting matter

Addressing strongly interacting matter in the region of energy density where the hadronic gas phase coexists with the quark-gluon plasma phase, we discuss how thermodynamic consistency can be used to constrain the equation of state for uniform matter and we illustrate the method by constructing a T{sub c}-dependent family of thermodynamically consistent equations of state based on simple spline interpolations between the gas and plasma phases.