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Original Essays | October 17, 2009

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My Catholic friend tilted her teacup like a fortune-teller. "You know," she said, "I think people who don't have God in their lives are like people... Continue »
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Complications

by Atul Gawande

Complications Cover

ISBN13: 9780805063196
ISBN10: 0805063196
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A brilliant and courageous doctor reveals, in gripping accounts of true cases, the power and limits of modern medicine.

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 also shows us 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. Gawande offers a richly detailed portrait of the people and the science, even as he tackles the paradoxes and imperfections inherent in caring for human lives.

At once tough-minded and humane, Complications is a new kind of medical writing, nuanced and lucid, unafraid to confront the conflicts and uncertainties that lie at the heart of modern medicine, yet always alive to the possibilities of wisdom in this extraordinary endeavor.

Review:

"Complications is a uniquely soulful book about the science of mending bodies." Adam Gopnik, author of From Paris to the Moon

Synopsis:

In gripping accounts of true cases, surgeon Atul Gawande explores the power and the limits of medicine, offering an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge. Complications lays bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is — uncertain, perplexing, and profoundly human.

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Melissa Kinsey, April 29, 2007 (view all comments by Melissa Kinsey)
Gawande's gift is taking his careful analysis of the medical field and applying it to life. Reading his articles, I often think of how the strategies he explores to improve medicine can be applied to education. This would be a great book club book.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780805063196
Subtitle:
A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Author:
Gawande, Atul
Publisher:
Metropolitan Books
Location:
New York
Subject:
Essays
Subject:
Surgery - General
Subject:
Surgery
Subject:
Medical
Subject:
Surgeons
Subject:
Medical - General
Subject:
Surgeons -- United States.
Copyright:
Edition Number:
1st ed.
Edition Description:
First
Series Volume:
107-240
Publication Date:
January 2002
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
269
Dimensions:
5 1/2 x 8 1/4

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