Audio Book Review: Cheating Death, by Sanjay Gupta, MD

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The bad news is that we’re all dying; the good news is that there are doctors and researchers who are discovering how to delay that inevitability as long as possible. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at Emory University, Associate Chief of Neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, and writer outlines ways in which scientists are finding ways to save lives that might otherwise have been lost. He describes both revolutionary new measures and counterintuitive applications of existing practices that are allowing more people to live longer when faced with fatal conditions. For instance, he cites Arizona's newly prescribed emergency medicine response of CCR as opposed to CPR. Instead of performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation along with chest compression, rescuers are instructed to use rapid chest compression only. This keeps blood pumping through the system, supplying the brain with oxygen. Lives are being saved because while onlookers might be reluctant to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation until help arrives, they have no hesitancy pressing on a victim's chest.

His credentials as a respected neurosurgeon add credence to the claims he makes about the potential to save lives and improve health by employing unorthodox methods in medical treatment. Telling stories of real people with life threatening injuries and illnesses and the heroic efforts of doctors to bring them back to sound health he creates a book that reads more like a novel than a research report. Along with medical procedures using therapeutic hypnotherapy, suspended animation and prenatal surgery, he discusses issues over which doctors have little or no control--near death experiences and miraculous recoveries attributed to faith and prayer.

This audio book serves a multitude of purposes: it's entertaining and informative, it provides suggestions for treatment options that doctors of seriously ill patients might not have considered and it offers all of us hope that being diagnosed with a terminal illness today doesn't necessarily mean certain death tomorrow. The more doctors and researchers explore the possibilities of cheating death and the more they engage in discussions about their findings, the greater the chances we'll live longer, healthier lives. Dr. Gupta is giving listeners the opportunity to be part of those discussions by reporting his findings in this very comprehensible and valuable book.

Cheating Death: The Doctors and Medical Miracles that Are Saving Lives Against All Odds, by Sanjay Gupta, MD
Read by the author
Hachette Audio, unabridged: 7 hours on 7 CDs

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