Do no harm. Stories about life, death and neurosurgery (№ 452322)

It was worth stopping at that moment and leaving the last part of the tumor intact, but I wanted to proudly say that I cut out the tumor completely. There are never any residual tumors in the postoperative pictures that neurosurgical stars show when they speak at conferences. As I began to remove the last piece of the tumor, I severed a tiny, pin-thick perforating branch from the basilar artery. A thin trickle of bright red arterial blood shot up, the damage to the brain stem was severe. As a result, the patient never woke up after the operation. Because of this, seven years later, I saw him in a nursing home. I learned two lessons that day. First: there is no need to perform an operation that a more experienced surgeon refused. Second: you need to treat reports at conferences with healthy skepticism.