FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 337:206-207 July 17, 1997 Number 3 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text Purchase this article Letters Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited

By Mickey S. Eisenberg. 304 pp. New York, Oxford University Press, 1997. $27.50. ISBN 0-19-510179-0.

Sudden death outside the hospital as a result of ventricular fibrillation, the subject of Life in the Balance, was irreversible until the 1950s. Until then, complete airway obstruction (a common byproduct of coma), apnea, and the absence of a pulse outside the hospital meant certain death. Despite occasional anecdotes since antiquity about attempts to reverse sudden death, most people accepted it as an act of God. The Enlightenment in the 18th century brought a willingness to reverse sudden death. However, the ability to do so outside the hospital was lacking until the 1950s, with the advent of external cardiopulmonary resuscitation . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Related Letters:

Resuscitation Medicine
McMechan S., Cochrane D., Adgey J., Safar P.
Extract | Full Text  
N Engl J Med 1997; 337:1695-1696, Dec 4, 1997. Correspondence

This article has been cited by other articles:

• McMechan, S., Cochrane, D., Adgey, J., Safar, P. (1997). Resuscitation Medicine. NEJM 337: 1695-1696 [Full Text]