The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds
by Sanjay Gupta
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2009
304 pages
Genre: Science, Health and the Environment
Publication Information
An unborn baby with a fatal heart defect...a skier submerged for an hour in a frozen Norwegian lake...a comatose brain surgery patient whom doctors have declared a "vegetable."
Twenty years ago all of them would have been given up for dead, with no realistic hope for survival. But today, thanks to incredible new medical advances, each of these individuals is alive and well...Cheating Death.
In this riveting book, Dr. Sanjay Gupta - neurosurgeon, chief medical correspondent for CNN, and bestselling author - chronicles the almost unbelievable science that has made these seemingly miraculous recoveries possible. A bold new breed of doctors has achieved amazing rescues by refusing to accept that any life is irretrievably lost. Extended cardiac arrest, "brain death," not breathing for over an hour - all these conditions used to be considered inevitably fatal, but they no longer are. Today, revolutionary advances are blurring the traditional line between life and death in fascinating ways.
Drawing on real-life stories and using his unprecedented access to the latest medical research, Dr. Gupta dramatically presents exciting accounts of how pioneering physicians and researchers are altering our understanding of how the human body functions when it comes to survival-and why more and more patients who once would have died are now alive. From experiments with therapeutic hypothermia to save comatose stroke or heart attack victims to lifesaving operations in utero to the study of animal hibernation to help wounded soldiers on far-off battlefields, these remarkable case histories transform and enrich all our assumptions about the true nature of death and life.
"The achievements are stunning,...it's beyond comforting to know there are doctors who simply refuse to quit a brave but ultimately losing battle to wrestle control over death." - Publishers Weekly
"This book is all over the place as far as the medical anecdotes go, but it has a friendly, narrative, storytelling feel that will satisfy fans of popular science." - Library Journal
"Because Gupta focuses only on the "medical miracles," however, he misses an opportunity for an important cost-benefit analysis of the highly risky and often-unsuccessful attempts to 'cheat death.' Well-informed and accessible, but incomplete. " - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review." - Booklist
"Dr. Gupta's new book is not only fascinating, it reads like a fast-paced adventure story, and it is. Full of literally heart-stopping moments, Cheating Death is an account of modern-day scientific miracles, most of which would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago, and which expand the very boundaries of life itself." - Oliver Sacks
"I owe my recovery and my health to medical advances and the remarkable pioneers behind them. In his new book, the World's Doctor, Sanjay Gupta, delivers a breathtaking preview of a coming revolution in medicine that challenges virtually everything we think we know about living and dying. A truly provocative and fascinating reading experience." - President Bill Clinton
This information about Cheating Death was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sanjay Gupta, MD, is a practicing neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital and associate chief of service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
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