A Patient S Guide To Surgery

In a Patient's Guide to Surgery, Dr. Edward L. Bradley III explains all you need to know to prepare yourself for the surgical experience. This book describes how you can actively participate in the decision-making process and, as a result, improve your chances for successful surgery and recovery. A Patient's Guide to Surgery also lists specific questions you should consider when evaluating a doctor, a hospital, or a prepaid health plan.

Each year, over 250,000 heart valve repair and heart valve replacement operations are performed for conditions including stenosis, prolapse, insufficiency, aneurysm, Tetralogy of Fallot and regurgitation. However, most patients and caregivers surveyed felt their expectations were mismanaged - both before and after surgery. The Patient's Guide to Heart Valve Surgery was written by Adam Pick, a double heart valve surgery patient, to address this troubling issue and prepare the patient and caregiver for the challenges and opportunities of valve surgery - from diagnosis through recovery.

The day of surgery causes a great deal of apprehension. Stewart provides information about preparing for surgery, how anesthesia works, and how to best communicate with doctors to understand options.

This book is a step-by-step guide through the medical aspect of surgery, beginning with a walk into the hospital or surgery center and ending with recovery details. It contains the basic knowledge to help patients and caretakers have a better understanding of the surgical process, the surgical team, the equipment, and the language used. It is written by an experienced RN to share what nurses want all patients to know, without prematurely lulling them to sleep!

Written by the ultimate insider--a nurse with over twenty-five years of experience--this book provides the latest information on forty-four surgical procedures. In addition, the candid discussions of what to expect after surgery include positive and negative statements from patients who've undergone each procedure. This guidebook also includes simple explanations of medical tests, samples of common medical forms, and a glossary of medical terms.

For patients considering weight loss surgery, there is an enormous amount of information to know. In a very few short years, the number of options for surgery have increased. Patients undergoing surgery need to know their surgical options, how they compare in outcomes and risks, and how to prepare before and after surgery. In addition, the dietary changes necessary after weight loss surgery require a significant amount of education. Patients need a resource to turn to when looking for appropriate foods to eat and when evaluating the foods that they want to eat. Education is the key to succeeding with weight loss surgery. Covering all this information is impossible in a single visit to your physician, or even after several visits. Considering Weight Loss Surgery is a resource for both the patient and for the physician. It serves to organize the information that needs to pass from surgeon to patient, and acts as a longstanding reference to patients well after they have had surgery. By standardizing the educational process and providing a reference for patients, better outcomes and better understanding can be obtained.

Multimedia is making some progress; this CD-ROM reaches toward using the technology to enhance learning (rather than as a novelty, unsuccessful either as entertainment or pedagogy, as we've seen in earlier, over-hyped multimedia products). It presents visuals that can be rotated 360 degrees, audio and text "captions," and some 200 animations that do, fairly successfully, convey visual conceptions of such activities as heart blood flow, smelling, hearing, breathing, etc. The product is carefully conceived, and will serve nicely as a novel supplement to introductory texts on the subject, for students who have access to the needed computer power. Available in separate Macintosh and Windows versions; needs 486 DX, Windows 3.1, 8 Mb RAM. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR