Complications: Notes From The Life Of A Young Surgeon

In gripping accounts of true cases, Atul Gawande performs exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form but as it actually is—complicated, perplexing and profoundly human. He 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. Dramatic, revealing stories of patients and doctors explore how daily mistakes occur, why good surgeons go bad, and 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.

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

• Highly acclaimed book that is destined to be a bestseller
• Literally straight-from-the-gut writing