Main description:

Breathing is a continuous battle between our need for oxygen and forces in nature that attack our lungs. Three hundred thousand Americans will die of respiratory diseases this year. Gasping for Air is the dramatic story of how infections, toxins, carcinogens, and air pollution strike against one of our basic body functions. The book also describes how we come into the struggle with diseases like asthma, cystic fibrosis, and sleep apnea, which make us vulnerable to assaults on breathing from without and within.

We have powerful weapons to defend breathing. Medical science, public health, engineering, and business, all play important roles in the effort to support breathing. Yet, Gasping for Air also reminds readers how breathing support has been at the eye of the storm in many ethical dilemmas of modern healthcare. Here, Kevin Glynn, an experienced pulmonologist and lifelong asthma sufferer tells stories about the third most common cause of premature deaths in the developed world, describes lethal forces in Nature (infections, genetic predispositions) and from human activities (dusty occupations, tobacco smoking, chemical toxins, drug overdoses) that threaten to suffocate us, and offers sage advice for how to prevent and address those threats and the damage they cause.

Contents:

Timeline
Author's Note
Introduction
PART I. Worldwide Plagues
1. The Disease Medicine Never Cured(Tuberculosis)
2. Captains of the Men of Death(Bacterial Pneumonia)
3. They Stacked Caskets in the Halls(Influenza)
4. The Man in the Iron Lung(Polio)
5. Products of Parasitic Beings(Fungal Infections)
6. Some Like It Hot(Legionnaires' Disease)
7. The Virus with No Name(SARS, MERS)
PART II. Killer Air
8. Suffocating Work(Occupational Diseases)
9. Code Red(Fires and Disasters)
10. Cleopatra Reincarnate(Overdoses and Toxins)
11. Smoking Beagles(Tobacco Smoking)
12. Dad, and the Werewolf (Lung Cancer)
13. The Lethal Brown Cloud(Atmospheric Pollution)
PART III. Vulnerable Breathing
14. Panting for Air(Asthma)
15. Lungs That Do Not Collapse(COPD)
16. The Great Masquerader(Pulmonary Blood Clots)
17. Cells Like Elongated Crescents(Genetic Breathing Disorders)
18. The Pump and the Bellows(The Heart and the Lungs)
19. To Die To Sleep (Sleep Disordered Breathing)
20. The First Breaths(Newborn Respiratory Distress)
PART IV. Breathing Defends
21. Around the World on Oxygen(Respiratory Care)
22. Thank You For My Life(Ventilators)
PART V. Breathing Adapts
23. I Wouldn't Want That for Myself(Ethical Dilemmas)
24. A Science of Uncertainty(Closing)