Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery - as seen on 'life-changing' BBC documentary Confessions of a Brain Surgeon

by Henry Marsh

Most neurosurgeons become increasingly conservative as they get older – meaning that they advise surgery in fewer patients than when they were younger. I certainly have – but not just because I am more experienced than in the past and more realistic about the limitations of surgery. It is also because I have become more willing to accept that it can be better to let somebody die rather than to operate when there is only a very small chance of the person returning to an independent life. I have not become better at predicting the future but I have become less anxious about how I might be judged by others. The problem, of course, is that so often I do not know just how small the chance of a good recovery might be because the future is always uncertain. It is much easier just to operate on every case and turn one’s face away from the fact that such unquestioning treatment will result in many people surviving with terrible brain damage.