Fight For Life

The riskiest day of your life is the day you are born. During birth, the design of the mother’s pelvis and the baby’s head will be subject to huge pressure. It takes an extraordinary battle for survival just to make it into the world. Modern medicine has done wonders to make birth safer than ever before. But it’s a dangerous business for child and mother. Two newborns are featured in Birth: one needs life-saving treatment because the umbilical cord is wrapped around his neck, while meconium aspiration threatens another’s health.

During childhood our bodies are building up the mechanisms that allow us to survive, at the same time as facing some of life most deadly enemies. We find out why children are particularly vulnerable to some hazards, whilst also having incredible powers of survival. And how modern medicine works with the growing body to overcome the hazards of childhood. This episode follows three children: one undergoing a heart transplant, another having an asthma attack and a third with injuries caused by falling under a train.

As we reach our teenage years our body is stronger than ever before. Our immune system is nearing full strength, whilst our still growing bodies have incredible healing powers. Just as well, because teens have limited experience of assessing danger and so tend to take uncalculated risks, which can have fatal consequences. The victim of a stabbing and two girls with alcohol poisoning are rushed to hospital in this episode, while the family of a boy with a tumour on his spinal cord is faced with an agonising decision.

Once we reach our 20s, our defence mechanisms are at their peak. Our chances of survival are greatest in this phase of life - despite the risks of injury or disease - because our bodies are at their strongest. Yet dangers can still strike even the healthiest body. This episode follows a mother-to-be who has a congenital heart condition, the victim of a road traffic accident and a patient with incurable liver disease.

As we reach our 40s, our bodies are starting to show the effects of time. It is now that we face the results of the lifestyle we have led. And imperfections in our bodies, that we may have carried for years without knowing, may reveal themselves. This episode explores the body's ability to draw on its own reserves when things start to go wrong. It follows a man with a life-threatening aneurysm in the main blood vessel supplying his vital organs, a heavy smoker who has a build of carbon dioxide in her blood which is poisoning her brain, and a patient with a weak heart having a pacemaker implanted by robotic surgery.

However good our bodies are at survival, resources eventually start to run low. Despite its slowed responses in old age, the human body, with help from modern medicine, can fight injury and illness. This episode follows a man who has a series of cardiac arrests, a woman showing signs of head injury following a fall at home, and a man who needs urgent surgery after the discovery that he has a necrotic bowel.