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Severe sepsis is the third most common killer in the United States today. Kevin Tracey, a neurosurgeon and immunologist, offers a riveting account of a medical and scientific "perfect storm." Focusing on his battle to save a scalded baby's life, he shows us the deadly downward spiral of infection and organ failure that is severe sepsis.

Tracey uses this tragic example to explain in accessible language how the brain normally restrains the immune system and protects the patient from its lethal effects. We watch him face the challenges that arise in the child's case and learn how the immune system finally escapes the brain's control to indiscriminately kill normal cells along with, or even instead of, foreign microbes.

An important dispatch from the medical frontlines, Fatal Sequence is a narrative readers will long remember about a shocking, all too common event: death from complications of illness or injuries that never should have killed.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The ER

2. The Burn Unit

3. The OR

4. Shock

5. Pestilence

6. False Hope

7. Unraveling Shock

8. Unraveling Sepsis

9. Brain Control of the Fatal Sequence

10. Legacy

Index

Endorsements

"The powerful and gripping story of one doctor's battle to save the life a severely burned child who has become the victim of overwhelming infection. It is medicine practiced at its purest and most noble, and all told in a prose that is easily understood."

-Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons and The Whistlers' Room 

"Dr. Kevin Tracey's exploration into the immune system and its direct connection to the brain opens up a new door into the search for treatments. This book is a must for anyone interested in protecting the body from foreign organisms, and, in many instances, itself."

-Jamie Talan, science reporter, Newsday 

"This is a book about the scientific process: how it unravels unknowns, often with totally unanticipated findings, and how it provides totally new and beautiful approaches to prevalent ills."

-Ralph Steinman, M.D., Henry G. Kunkel Professor and Senior Physician, The Rockefeller University
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