Life in the Balance: Emergency Medicine and the Quest to Reverse Sudden Death

Abstract

Life in the Balance is the riveting story of the ongoing quest to reverse sudden death. Written by Mickey S. Eisenberg, M.D., Ph. D., Director of the Emergency Medicine Service at the University of Washington Medical Center, it is infused with a dedicated doctor's passion for saving lives. Eschewing medical jargon, Eisenberg takes us on a fascinating journey of discovery that ranges from biblical times to a real life, minute-by-minute resuscitation in suburban King County, Washington. The journey begins with a grief-stricken mother who brings her lifeless child before the prophet Elijah, and continues with, among others, a physician to gladiators, a Danish masseur, a Baltimore fire chief, smooth-talking medical quacks, and a crusty cardiologist. This wildly improbable but true tale includes magnets, bellows, rectal tobacco smoke, frog legs, executed criminals, bells attached to coffins, reanimation chairs, a long car ride from Kansas City to Baltimore, a serendipitous dog experiment, and a one-story hospital in Belfast. Eisenberg recreates the thrilling breakthroughs in our understanding of respiration, circulation, defibrillation, and the need for mobile emergency medical services, and confronts the limits of modern medicine. He reveals that just as critical as the ability to resuscitate is the will to resuscitate - inconceivable before the Enlightenment, when reversing sudden death would have been viewed as tampering with divine wall, and still a source of painful dilemmas today in cases of brain damage or serious illness. A first-class medical detective story, Life in the Balance is supplemented with a straightforward, easy-to-use guide to emergency CPR, a handy glossary of relevant medical terms, and a potentially life-saving Community Survival Checklist. It is must reading not only for health care and emergency medicine practitioners, but for everyone whose life has been touched by the modern-day miracle of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.