Every aspect of surgery is personalised by the surgeons. For example, closing wounds, Whang claims is prone to ritual: there's one surgeon who counts her sutures; if she ends on 13, she either takes one out or adds [another]".
Whang and his team chuckle like school kids when walking past the hospital cafeteria which sports multiple healthy eating posters with photos promoting the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables cheek by jowl with slogans boasting the merits of nutrition, yet the same cafeteria is festooned with "stainless steel warmers holding sausages floating in pools of grease" and a deep fried assortments of other items.
Some fascinating topics are covered by Whang, in particular the occurrence of patients lying awake in surgery (up to 6 per thousand surgeries) In such cases, patients will feel something; be it the knife cutting through or similar. "I mean it's a horrible thing to imagine. Once you go to sleep [you remain continually anaesthetised]…but there are a number of factors that will increase the chance of being aware [of the surgical procedure]. One is genetics. Certain people have been shown to have a genetic predisposition to 'resist' the amnesic effect of anaesthetics".
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Dr Whang enjoys sharing with his readers his insights into a host of medical specialists, including cardiologists; psychiatrists; neurologists; plastic surgeons; gastroenterologists and gynaecologists. But it's the orthopaedic surgeons who stand out given their strong personality traits. Whang recalls one who said "he didn't feel he'd done a good job unless [during a procedure] the blood splatters reached the ceiling".
And often slopping on to his notes and on to him.
This book is a light read prior to any hospitalisation. I closed the book with one overriding criticism and it's a big one: there is no comprehensive examination of the consequences of poorly applied anaesthesia or a patient's poor tolerance of the anaesthetic drugs, either of which can result in different levels of post operative cognitive impairment and possible catastrophic changes to a patient's quality of life.
Assuming the patient survives the surgery that is.
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