LONGLISTED FOR THE THE BMA MEDICAL BOOK AWARDSAccording to a wry saying among radiologists, finding a tumour in a mammogram is like finding a snowball in a blizzard. Up to thirty percent of breast-cancer diagnoses are given to those who have no cancer at all. Medicine is subject to far more uncertainty than we commonly acknowledge. While it is portrayed a science, it can sometimes be scarily close to educated guesswork.Covering everything from the efficacy ...

"Hatch packs a wealth of knowledge into the book...poignant." - Associated PressDr. Steven Hatch, an infectious disease specialist, first came to Liberia in November 2013 to work at a hospital in Monrovia. Six months later, several of the physicians he had served with were dead or unable to work, and Ebola had become a world health emergency. Inferno is his account of the epidemic that nearly consumed a nation, as well as its deeper origins....

There's a running joke among radiologists: finding a tumor in a mammogram is akin to finding a snowball in a blizzard. A bit of medical gallows humor, this simile illustrates the difficulties of finding signals (the snowball) against a background of noise (the blizzard). Doctors are faced with similar difficulties every day when sifting through piles of data from blood tests to X-rays to endless lists of patient symptoms.Diagnoses are often just educated guesses, and prognoses less...

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From renowned mental health expert and speaker Dr. Gabor Maté, this acclaimed, bestselling guide provides insight into the mind-body link between illness and health, and the critical role that stress and our emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.In this accessible and groundbreaking book—filled with the moving stories of real people—medical doctor and bestselling author Gabor Maté shows that emotion and psy...

"Must reading for every physician who cares for patients and every patient who wishes to get the best care." —Time magazineFrom Dr. Jerome Groopman, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and one of the world’s leading researchers in cancer and AIDS, a groundbreaking, profound view of twenty-first-century medical decision-making, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to ...

For many complaints and conditions, the benefits from surgery are lower, and the risks higher, than you or your surgeon think. In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated. That these claims come from an experienced, practising orthopaedic surgeon who performs many of these operations himself, makes the unsettling argument particularly compelling.Of course no surgeon is recommending invasive surgery i...

For those fortunate enough to reside in the developed world, death before reaching a ripe old age is a tragedy, not a fact of life. Although aging and dying are not diseases, older Americans are subject to the most egregious marketing in the name of “successful aging” and “long life,” as if both are commodities. In Rethinking Aging, Nortin M. Hadler examines health-care choices offered to aging Americans and argues that too often the choices serve to profit the provider rather tha...

How can a teenager adopted at birth nearly die because his real mother didn’t get a measles shot?How can a husband’s faith in his wife’s fidelity determine whether radical treatment will cure her or kill her?How can a missed eye doctor appointment reveal a genetic disease?How can doctors choose the right course for a pregnant woman when one may kill her and the other would abort her fetus?Answers to these questions and more are pursued eve...

Why medicine adopts ineffective or harmful medical practices only to abandon them—sometimes too late.Medications such as Vioxx and procedures such as vertebroplasty for back pain are among the medical "advances" that turned out to be dangerous or useless. What Dr. Vinayak K. Prasad and Dr. Adam S. Cifu call medical reversal happens when doctors start using a medication, procedure, or diagnostic tool without a robust evidence base—and then stop using it when it is f...

Nortin Hadler’s clearly reasoned argument surmounts the cacophony of the health care debate. Hadler urges everyone to ask health care providers how likely it is that proposed treatments will afford meaningful benefits and he teaches how to actively listen to the answer. Each chapter of Worried Sick is an object lesson on the uses and abuses of common offerings, from screening tests to medical and surgical interventions. By learning to distinguish good medical advice from persuasiv...

For patients with chronic pain, a guide to understanding their condition, the medical system's traditional treatments, and what other choices they have.Are you suffering from chronic pain? Do you feel that everyone, including your physician, thinks you are crazy? Are your loved ones and friends tired of hearing you complain? Are you becoming more depressed and anxious because of your pain? Do you find that you are isolating yourself from others? Are you sick of taki...

An empowering guide for increasing your quality of life, navigating challenges, and embracing opportunitiesJulie Stachowiak, PhD is the About.com Guide to Multiple Sclerosis. As an epidemiologist who is also a person living with MS, Julie has an in-depthunderstanding about the scientific developments around MS and the personal side of living with a chronic illness. In the Multiple Sclerosis Manifesto, Julie shows you how to create your own personal MS manifesto and provide...