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

I told her that what the family wanted would be entirely determined by what she said to them. If she said ‘we can operate and remove the damaged brain and he may just survive’ they were bound to say that we should operate. If, instead, she said ‘If we operate there is no realistic chance of his getting back to an independent life. He will be left profoundly disabled. Would he want to survive like that?’ the family would probably give an entirely different answer. What she was really asking them with the first question was ‘Do you love him enough to look after him when he is disabled?’ and by saying this she was not giving them any choice. In cases like this we often end up operating because it’s easier than being honest and it means that we can avoid a painful conversation. You might think the operation has been a success because the patient leaves the hospital alive but if you saw them years later – as I often do – you would realize that the result of the operation was a human disaster.