Like 'Extraordinary Measures'? Check out these other medical dramas on DVD

"Extraordinary Measures" brings to the fore the small but potent genre of medical dramas.

George Miller, the Australian director of "Babe" and the "Mad Max" trilogy, helmed the touching real-life story, "Lorenzo's Oil" (1992). Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte star as Augusto and Michaela Odone, parents whose young son develops adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD, a rare and fatal nerve disease.

Determined to fight the diagnosis, they begin an exhaustive search for information and research that pits them against the medical establishment.

Their tenacity and worldwide efforts eventually lead to a British chemist and a long chain of fatty acids found in grapeseed oil that help slow the neurological decline.

Miller is himself a doctor who made short films throughout his later years of medical school and residency at a hospital in Sydney.

Director Nick Cassavetes has made two films about parents driven to extreme choices to save a child. In last year's tear-jerker "My Sister's Keeper," Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric portray a couple who decide to conceive a child in the hopes of creating a genetic match for their leukemia-stricken daughter Kate (Sofia Vassilieva).

Their choice leads to serious repercussions for their family when years later the resulting child Anna (Abigail Breslin) is faced with having to donate a kidney to Kate and decides to sue her parents for emancipation.

Denzel Washington broadens the definition of extraordinary measures in "John Q" (2002).

When his son collapses during a baseball game, John Q. Archibald (Washington) and his wife (Kimberly Elise) learn the boy is in dire need of a heart transplant their insurance can't even begin to cover.

Desperate to get his son on a donor list, John creates a police standoff and media sensation when he takes the emergency room hostage.

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