Complications

Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This book is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human.

Atul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high, yet decisions must be made. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad. He shows what happens when medicine comes up against the inexplicable: an architect with incapacitating back pain for which there is no physical cause; a young woman with nausea that won't go away; a television newscaster whose blushing is so severe that she cannot do her job. And in a richly detailed portrait of both the people and the science, Gawande also ponders the human factor that makes saving lives possible.

ISBN	1861974981	DEWEY edition	DC22
ISBN13	9781861974983 (What's this?)	Pages	288
Publisher	Profile Books Ltd	Weight (grammes)	205
Imprint	Profile Books Ltd	Published in	London
Format	Paperback	Height (mm)	198
Publication date	03 Jul 2003	Width (mm)	130
Library of Congress	RD19	Academic level	Tertiary education
DEWEY	617.092

	Author's Note	1
	Introduction	3
Pt. I	Fallibility
	Education of a Knife	11
	The Computer and the Hernia Factory	35
	When Doctors Make Mistakes	47
	Nine Thousand Surgeons	75
	When Good Doctors Go Bad	88
Pt. II	Mystery
	Full Moon Friday the Thirteenth	109
	The Pain Perplex	115
	A Queasy Feeling	130
	Crimson Tide	146
	The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating	162
Pt. III	Uncertainty
	Final Cut	187
	The Dead Baby Mystery	202
	Whose Body Is It, Anyway?	208
	The Case of the Red Leg	228
	Notes on Sources	253
	Acknowledgments	265

'I don't know if Atul Gawande was born to be a surgeon -- I very much suspect so -- but he was certainly born to write. This wise and exciting account of life as a surgical resident...perfectly captures the wonder and fearful responsibility that come with cutting people open in the hope of making them whole again.' Bill Bryson 'Ever wondered how realistic ER is? Then read Gawande's superb book. The truth, you will find, is far more compelling, though the endings are never as neat. ...Gawande makes the scenes far more dramatic than television ever can. He is a first-class writer.' Scotland on Sunday 'Gawande draws you in with the story but leaves you wiser about science, about health, and even about the human condition.' Michael Kinsley

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A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science

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