When Life Is in Jeopardy : How Doctors Detect and Treat the Most Common Life-threatening Conditions

When Life Is in Jeopardy: How Doctors Detect and Treat the Most Common Life-Threatening Conditions, by physician and medical researcher Stephen Garrett Marcus, is a comprehensive, yet easy-to-read book about the life-threatening conditions and complications that are the most common causes of serious illness, injury and death in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

When Life Is in Jeopardy tells the entire story of diseases, injuries and their complications, including initial symptoms, making the diagnosis, initial treatments, treatment to prevent or treat relapses, benefits and risks of treatments, the outlook for survival and recovery, experimental treatment, and, if necessary, treatment to relieve suffering if a cure or remission becomes unlikely or impossible.

The book is divided into four sections:

• “Life-Threatening Diseases” explores the most common life-threatening diseases including the most common cancers, stroke, heart diseases, cirrhosis, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
• “Life-Threatening Injuries” explains how emergency physicians and surgeons evaluate and treat chest, abdominal and head trauma.
• “Life-Threatening Complications” discusses the large number of dangerous complications that can occur as a direct result of a serious disease or injury or as a side effect of medical or surgical treatments.
• “Clinical Trials” gives information about how new treatments are tested by responsible medical researchers and how a person can identify and enroll in a clinical trial of an experimental treatment.

The focus of this book is on the medical and surgical treatments of illnesses and injuries and their complications. Although it would be preferable, to prevent a disease or injury rather than treat it, preventive measures are usually beside the point once the disease or injury has struck. Prevention discussed in this book emphasizes prevention of disease progression or recurrence, and prevention of complications of a disease or its treatment.

Common questions a person will have when facing a life-threatening illness are “how can I regain or keep my health”, “how can I survive and recover from setbacks and complications”, and, for some diseases, "how long have I got to live". This book seeks to point out that a disease or complication does not come with fixed odds for partial or full recovery or with a defined period for that disease to reach a cure, stay in remission, or prove fatal. Each person is an individual and, for some reasons unknown, and for many reasons related to getting the very best medical care available, some people can be cured of their disease or survive and enjoy life’s normal activities for an extended period, while other people succumb to their disease quickly. Every person is an individual and not a statistic. The fight for life is always an option.

This empowering work, When Life Is in Jeopardy, offers information, insight, candor, and—ultimately—hope.

This book provides the reader with one of the most critical tools the fight for life requires: information.

Stephen Garrett Marcus, M.D. is a physician who has focused his professional career on the development of new treatments for life-threatening and disabling diseases. Born and educated in New York City, Dr. Marcus received his medical degree from New York Medical College. After an internal medicine residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, and oncology (cancer treatment) specialty training at the University of California in San Francisco, Dr. Marcus spent several years practicing emergency and critical care medicine while maintaining clinical activities caring for people with cancer.

In 1985, Dr. Marcus entered the biotechnology industry where he has been directly responsible or played a critical role in the development of a number of important new medications. Dr. Marcus was the leader of the team of scientists and physicians who developed Betaseron as the first effective treatment of multiple sclerosis. This revolutionized the treatment of multiple sclerosis and was the forerunner of the many drugs for multiple sclerosis that are available today.

Dr. Marcus played a key role in the development of fludarabine for a form of leukemia, and served as the leader of multinational teams of researchers developing new treatments of cancer, multiple sclerosis, as well as other life-threatening or disabling conditions.

At present, Dr. Marcus is the president and chief executive officer of a biotechnology company that is developing a new medication for the treatment of cancer and other life-threatening diseases.