Complications
A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Atul Gawande
About this listen
A new unabridged recording.
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 audio 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.
Complications was a 2002 National Book Award finalist for nonfiction.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
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Critic reviews
“None surpass Gawande in the ability to create a sense of immediacy, in his power to conjure the reality of the ward, the thrill of the moment-by-moment medical and surgical drama. Complications impresses for its truth and authenticity, virtues that it owes to its author being as much forceful writer as uncompromising chronicler.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“No one writes about medicine as a human subject as well as Atul Gawande. His stories about becoming a surgeon are scary, funny, absorbing.... Complications is a uniquely soulful book about the science of mending bodies.” (Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon)
“Gawande is arguably the best nonfiction doctor-writer around.... He's prescient and thoughtful...the heir to Lewis Thomas' humble, insightful and brilliantly crafted oeuvre." (Salon.com)
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- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Hoping for the stability he needs to start a family, Sandeep Jauhar, an attending cardiologist, accepts a position at a massive teaching hospital on the outskirts of Queens. With a decade's worth of elite medical training behind him, he is eager to settle down and reap the rewards of countless sleepless nights. Instead, he is confronted with sobering truths. Doctors' morale is low and getting lower.
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Frank, inside perspective on the follies of unintended consequences in medical reform
- By JW on 02-25-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
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When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
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Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
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Birth Day
- A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth
- By: Mark Sloan MD
- Narrated by: Mark Sloan MD
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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"I delivered twenty babies in the summer of 1977. I was hardly more than a baby myself, just turned 24 and starting my third year of medical school." So began Mark Sloan's three-decades-long exploration of the wonders and oddities of human childbirth. Pediatrician, husband, and father, the author has attended nearly 3000 births since that long-ago summer, encountering everything from routine deliveries to tense labor-room dramas.
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Great Book - Heavy on the History
- By Robert Ingalls on 03-16-17
By: Mark Sloan MD
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Shocked
- Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead
- By: David Casarett M.D.
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
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Not too long ago, there was no coming back from death. But now, with revolutionary medical advances, death has become just another serious complication. As a young medical student, Dr. David Casarett was inspired by the story of a two-year-old girl named Michelle Funk. Michelle fell into a creek and was underwater for over an hour. When she was found she wasn't breathing, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. That drowning should have been fatal. But after three hours of persistent work, a team of doctors and nurses was able to bring her back.
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Dead vs. Sincerely Dead
- By Gillian on 06-24-16
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The Undead
- Organ Harvesting, The Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers - How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death
- By: Dick Teresi
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
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Important and provocative, The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and nonconsciousness, is not exactly clear - and how this problem has been further complicated by the business of organ harvesting.
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Eye opening
- By Amy Giglio on 07-01-18
By: Dick Teresi
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Rise and Shine
- The Path to Life
- By: Simon Lewis
- Narrated by: Kelsey Grammer
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
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Crushed between a truck and a tree, Simon and his wife were both pronounced dead at the scene of a horrific car accident. Enduring a broken skull, jaw, arms, clavicle and pelvis, followed by a coma, Simon lives to tell his remarkable journey from tragedy to triumph.
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Amazing opportunities for healing!
- By Leah on 04-29-17
By: Simon Lewis
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God's Hotel
- A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
- By: Victoria Sweet
- Narrated by: Victoria Sweet
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
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San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.
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Great read
- By kayla solomon on 04-08-17
By: Victoria Sweet
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In Shock
- My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope
- By: Dr. Rana Awdish
- Narrated by: Dr. Rana Awdish, Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
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In Shock is a riveting first-hand account from a young critical care physician, who in the passage of a moment is transfigured into a dying patient. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly lays bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.
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Read this book!
- By CT on 11-08-17
By: Dr. Rana Awdish
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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Do No Harm
- Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
- By: Henry Marsh
- Narrated by: Jim Barclay
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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With compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached surgeons, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again.
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Uneven
- By Scott on 06-02-15
By: Henry Marsh
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As a nurse for 54 years, I applaud your effort to paint a true picture of Emergency Medicine!
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When the Air Hits Your Brain
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Finished in 1 and 1/2 days
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Empire of the Scalpel
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EXCELLENT FROM START TO FINISH.
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When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
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Phenomenal book!
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What listeners say about Complications
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Art
- 02-03-22
Excellent physician and author
Everything rings true in this book. All physicians could learn from reading it. I’m saying this as a physician. Only problem is the occasional mispronunciation of medical words by the reader, more amusing than bothersome.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Suzanne
- 09-30-20
Love Dr. Gawande
The book is essential Gawande. I love all his books. My issue is with the narration. The mispronunciations of medical was terrible. It makes it difficult to listen.
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- Ellie
- 11-10-24
Fascinating, honest and inspiring account of decision making in medicine
I was really surprised by his honesty. Doctors like him inspire more confidence not less. I hope his colleagues take note.
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- Suburban Homesteader
- 04-30-22
interesting listen
I enjoyed this book. I've listened to other books by this author and think he's just fantastic. my only quibble with this book, and it is small, is that sometimes the story seems to be included just because it's interesting. I think the title complications fits the stories, but not all of the stories flow well from one to another.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Alan Keith
- 11-26-22
A good casual read, while also being intellectually stimulating.
Gawande has a great writing style, and a way of breaking down complex cases into common parlance that make this book intellectually stimulating, without being overwhelmed by the complexity of the sheer ocean of knowledge he has to share. “Complications” explores some of his most interesting and unusual cases he has seen as a general surgeon, and lightly explores some shortcomings of the US medical situation - both for patients and doctors. Everything was presented in a way that piqued my curiosity and kept me wanting to read the next chapter.
The audio performance was fine, but there were a good many mispronunciations, and a few audio artifacts. Otherwise the voice reading was clear, and the speed consistent.
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- Garnete
- 02-06-22
Extremely insightful into surgeon challenges
Honest, transparent and insightful. Is extremely interesting understanding the challenges surgeons face, the limits of current science and the outstanding achievements surgery achieve. Awesome
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- Mwihaki Waithiru
- 03-20-24
Helps you appreciate doctors
Doctors are people too! That was the big lesson from this book.
They make mistakes just like everyone else does. The good ones (not quacks or those with inflated egos) carry a lot of guilt when things go wrong. Yet we forget all this when a medical procedure is botched or when we lose a loved one at the operating table.
Thanks for this book Dr Gawande. I'll listen to it again in future!
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- robert
- 07-27-24
Good stories too short.
Interesting, could be longer. It feels like you just get into the book and it wraps up. The author is good, the stories are good, narrator is good. I feel he should have drawn on a few more doctors to fill out this book. But all around a very entertaining book.
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- Jenny
- 09-06-24
Lots of leaning opportunities
Very interesting stories. I learned a lot from this book about rare medical problems. Indefinitely recommend it.
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- Rob
- 09-08-21
Read this!
Putting stories to patient care and complications and then pulling in the data - and the art in treating them - is an excellent way to make the take home information stick. I love it! Thank you for sharing this work.
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