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How Crises Spur Doctors to New Discoveries about the Brain
Dana Press
January 2004
On Sale: January 15, 2004
296 pages ISBN: 0972383042 EAN: 9780972383042 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Self-Help
Just a few short years ago, the outcome of a
life-threatening brain injury lay in the hands of the
victim's god. Neurologists had a self-mocking term for their
role in healing: "Diagnose and adios." While doctors knew
more about why and how a brain might die or be permanently
impaired, they rarely intervened in brain trauma cases,
believing there was little they could do. Today, though, a
brave new world of brain rescue is opening up. A handful of
hospitals around the country have begun to develop
neurological intensive care centers where aggressive new
treatments are pulling brain-injured patients back from the
brink. Acclaimed science journalist Edward J. Sylvester here takes
us to one of the first of these facilities to develop
neurointensive care, The Johns Hopkins Medical Centers in
Baltimore. Sylvester introduces us to Marek Mirski, the
pioneering neurologist who leads the neurointensive team,
and follows Mirski into the very center of the brain trauma
storm through five dramatic and very different cases.
Sylvester also takes us on a whirlwind side trip to New
York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where Mirksi's
compatriot Dr. Stephan Mayer--the founding
neurointensivist--struggles for the life of yet another
patient. A vivid, elegant writer, Sylvester has filled his
book with unforgettable and fascinating events. His
descriptions of the maelstrom in the traumatized brain are
some of the most powerful ever put to paper, and the human
faces in his cast of characters are almost clear enough to
touch. Back from the Brink combines the best of medical
journalism with the drama of ER as it covers some of the
most innovative developments and exotic territory in modern
medicine.
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