From the bestselling author of Einstein’s Dreams comes this harrowing tale of one man's struggle to cope in a wired world, even as his own biological wiring short-circuits. As Boston’s Red Line shuttles Bill Chalmers to work one summer morning, something extraordinary happens. Suddenly, he can't remember which stop is his, where he works, or even who he is. The only thing he can remember is his corporate motto: the maximum information in the minimum time. Bill’s memory returns, but a strange numbness afflicts him. As he attempts to find a diagnosis for his deteriorating illness, he descends into a nightmarish tangle of inconclusive results, his company’s manic frenzy, and his family’s disbelief. Ultimately, Bill discovers that he is fighting not just for his body but also for his soul.

A renowned expert in palliative care, who is featured in the Netflix documentary, End Game, Dr. Pantilat delivers a compassionate and sensitive guide to living well with serious illness. In Life After the Diagnosis, Dr. Steven Z. Pantilat, a renowned international expert in palliative care demystifies the medical system for patients and their families. He makes sense of what doctors say, what they actually mean, and how to get the best information to help make the best medical decisions. Dr. Pantilat covers everything from the first steps after the diagnosis and finding the right caregiving and support, to planning your future so your loved ones don't have to. He offers advice on how to tackle the most difficult treatment decisions and discussions and shows readers how to choose treatments that help more than they hurt, stay consistent with their values and personal goals, and live as well as possible for as long as possible.

Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.

A collection of more than fifty hard-to-crack medical quandaries, featuring the best of The New York Times Magazine's popular Diagnosis column—now a Netflix original series “Lisa Sanders is a paragon of the modern medical detective storyteller.”—Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal As a Yale School of Medicine physician, the New York Times bestselling author of Every Patient Tells a Story, and an inspiration and adviser for the hit Fox TV drama House, M.D., Lisa Sanders has seen it all. And yet she is often confounded by the cases she describes in her column: unexpected collections of symptoms that she and other physicians struggle to diagnose. A twenty-eight-year-old man, vacationing in the Bahamas for his birthday, tries some barracuda for dinner. Hours later, he collapses on the dance floor with crippling stomach pains. A middle-aged woman returns to her doctor, after visiting two days earlier with a mild rash on the back of her hands. Now the rash has turned purple and has spread across her entire body in whiplike streaks. A young elephant trainer in a traveling circus, once head-butted by a rogue zebra, is suddenly beset with splitting headaches, as if someone were “slamming a door inside his head.” In each of these cases, the path to diagnosis—and treatment—is winding, sometimes frustratingly unclear. Dr. Sanders shows how making the right diagnosis requires expertise, painstaking procedure, and sometimes a little luck. Intricate, gripping, and full of twists and turns, Diagnosis puts readers in the doctor’s place. It lets them see what doctors see, feel the uncertainty they feel—and experience the thrill when the puzzle is finally solved.

A practical guide to the origins and treatment options for agitation, a common symptom of psychiatric and neurologic disorders.

A complete full-color guide to medical test selection and test result interpretation Laboratory Medicine is an essential text for medical students and residents studying clinical pathology, medical technology students, and for practitioners working in a clinical setting. By selecting the appropriate tests and interpreting the results correctly, physicians using this book should be able to optimize patient outcomes and reduce the cost of achieving a diagnosis. This full-color guide features an easy-to-follow, consistent presentation for each disease discussed. Chapters begin with a brief description of the disorder followed by a discussion that includes tables detailing the laboratory evaluation of specific disorders, and coverage of diagnosis, baseline tests to exclude diagnostic possibilities, and clinical indications that warrant further screening and special testing. Features Updated to reflect the most current information 46 laboratory methods presented in easy-to-understand illustrations which include information on the expense and complexity of the assays More than 200 tables and full-color algorithms encapsulate important information and facilitate understanding Full-color blood-smear micrographs demonstrate common abnormal morphologies of red blood cells Valuable learning aids in each chapter, including learning objectives, chapter outlines, and a general introduction Extensive table of Clinical Laboratory Reference Values showing the conversions between US and SI units for each value Coverage of genetic test options that are now commonly used in clinical practice