Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery review

Patients see neurosurgeons as gods, but what is the reality? Henry Marsh has written a memoir of startling candourWe go to doctors for help and healing; we don't expect them to make us worse. Most people know the aphorism taught to medical students, attributed to the ancient Greek Hippocrates but timeless in its quiet sanity: "First, do no harm." But many medical treatments do cause harm: learning how to navigate the risks of drug therapies, as well as the catastrophic consequences of botched or inadvised surgical operations, is a big part of why training doctors takes so long. Even the simplest of therapies carries the risk of making things worse. Drugs such as statins that lower cholesterol might reduce your risk of stroke or heart attack, but they also stiffen your muscles and inflame your liver. Drugs to thin your blood against clots run the risk of devastating haemorrhage. Operations to remove prostate cancer might leave you impotent and incontinent; removing a gall bladder can ruin your digestion. The most dangerous speciality is widely considered to be neurosurgery. When a surgeon meddles with your brain it's not just incontinence or bad digestion you risk but coma, paralysis and death.Brain surgeons such as Henry Marsh, the author of this startling and moving memoir, have to live, breathe, operate and make urgent decisions in full awareness of a terrible dilemma: if they open the skull they might save the patient's life, but a slip of the...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: The Guardian Private healthcare Culture Society Reviews Books Neuroscience UK news Hospitals NHS Source Type: news