“An engaging and illuminating exploration of the invisible medical specialty that is anesthesia.… Counting Backwards pulls back the veil on the very act of being alive.” —Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, author of What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear For many of the 40 million Americans who undergo it each year, anesthesia is the source of great fear and fascination. In Counting Backwards, pediatric anesthesiologist Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo delivers an unforgettable account of the procedure’s daily dramas and fundamental mysteries. Przybylo has administered anesthesia more than 30,000 times over his thirty-year career: on newborn babies, screaming toddlers, sullen teenagers, even a gorilla. Filled with intense moments of near-disaster, life-saving successes, and simple grace, Counting Backwards is for anyone curious about what happens after we lose consciousness.

A fascinating and entertaining look at the men behind the first surgical use of anesthesia—and the price they paid for their breakthrough. On Friday, October 16, 1846, only one operation was scheduled at Massachusetts General Hospital.... That day in Boston, the operation was the routine removal of a growth from a man's neck. But one thing would not be routine: instead of using pulleys, hooks, and belts to subdue a patient writhing in pain, this crucial operation would be the first performed under a general anesthetic. No one knew whether the secret concoction would work. Some even feared it might kill the patient. This engrossing book chronicles what happened that day and during its dramatic aftermath. In a vivid history that is stranger than fiction, Ether Day tells the story of the three men who converged to invent the first anesthesia—and the war of ego and greed that soon sent all three men spiraling wildly out of control.

This is the second edition of the 2014 bestselling medical-legal novel. Dr. Nico Antone, an anesthesiologist at Stanford University, is married to Alexandra, a high-powered real estate agent obsessed with money. Their son, Johnny, an 11th-grader with immense potential, struggles to get the grades he'll need to attend an Ivy League college. After a screaming match with Alexandra, Nico moves himself and Johnny from Palo Alto, California, to his frozen childhood home of Hibbing, Minnesota. The move helps Johnny improve his grades and thus seem more attractive to universities, but Nico loves the freedom from his wife. Hibbing also happens to be the hometown of music icon Bob Dylan. Joining the hospital staff, Nico runs afoul of a psychotic nurse anesthetist who calls himself Bobby Dylan, who plays Dylan songs twice a week in a bar called Heaven's Door, and who believes he is the real Bob Dylan. As Nico and Johnny settle in at Hibbing, their lives turn around, until the soulless Alexandra dies, which accelerates the downfall of Dr. Antone, who is accused of her murder. The medical realism and subsequent courtroom realism and big university atmosphere versus small Minnesota town make this novel ring true. The author's medical expertise is central to the plot, and the author's career as a medical expert witness brings sizzling energy to the concluding courtroom scenes.

Winner, 2017 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award You know how it is when you go under. The jab, the countdown, the— —and then you wake. This book is about what happens in between. Until a hundred and seventy years ago many people chose death over the ordeal of surgery. Now hundreds of thousands undergo operations every day. Anaesthesia has made it possible. But how much do we really know about what happens to us on the operating table? Can we hear what’s going on around us? Is pain still pain if we are not awake to feel it, or don’t remember it afterwards? How does the unconscious mind deal with the body’s experience of being cut open and ransacked? And how can we help ourselves through it? Haunting, lyrical, sometimes shattering, Anaesthesia leavens science with personal experience to bring an intensely human curiosity to the unknowable realm beyond consciousness. What really happens to us when we are anaesthetised? By this I mean not what happens to the pinging, crackling apparatus of our nerves and spinal cords and brains, but what happens to us—to the person who is me or the person who is you—as doctors go about the messy business of slicing and delving within us? Kate Cole-Adams is a Melbourne writer and journalist. Her non-fiction work Anaesthesia won the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award, 2017 and the 2017 Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists Media Award. It was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction, 2017. Her novel Walking to the Moon is also published by Text. ‘Anaesthesia is mesmerising...This rich and thorough study looks more deeply into questions about the nature of consciousness than many of us who undergo an anaesthetic are likely, or willing, to ponder.’ Australian Book Review ‘A work of splendid richness and depth, driven by a curiosity so intense that it hazards at times the extreme boundaries of the sayable.’ Helen Garner ‘Kate Cole-Adams has been fascinated with our funny non-being during surgery for a long time, and Anaesthesia feels like a book that’s taken over a decade to write, which it is. It also feels like you’re having a decade’s worth of conversations with a dogged, but generous and resourceful thinker, with someone (she is both a journalist and a novelist) who can crack open a complex idea, and then run with it.’ Readings 'An obsessive, mystical, terrifying, and even phantasmagorical exploration of anesthesia’s shadowy terra incognita.’ The New Yorker 'Remarkable in its attention to historical detail and quality of the primary sources...practising anaesthetists should read what has become the single best account of our profession’s most philosophically fragile constructs—consciousness and self... Cole-Adams has distilled and articulated the art of our profession.’ Anaesthesia Intensive Care journal (published by Australian Society of Anaesthetists) ‘Extraordinarily well-researched and delicately structured, this is a book with few parallels. Exceptional writing illuminates a topic that affects most of us, but that few of us understand.’ Judges’ Report, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, 2018 ‘Comfortably numb. A close-up look at anaesthesia is equal parts social history, popular science and report on experience.’ NZ Listener ‘Anaesthesia is not just an account of medical research but a poetic exploration of the mysteries of the human mind.’ Australian ‘Should be compulsory reading for all anaesthetists, others responsible for the care of surgical patients, and medical students who wish to achieve a true perspective of today’s anaesthesia.’ medicSA ‘Cole-Adams’s prose is sinuous, at times intoxicating, and witty.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘A troubling, anxious subject that most of us would rather avoid or deflect with dark humour. Cole-Adams has illuminated it in a memorable way. The book is a gift not of oblivion but of awareness.’ Inside Story ‘For the interested reader, it’s an outline of the science, with an emphasis on the unknown. For the practitioner, it’s a patient experience, eloquently expressed. There’s much more the anaesthesia than meets the eye, and this book provides a glimpse into the depths.’ Conversation ‘A fascinating mix of historical background, moving—sometimes shocking—surgical stories, interviews with experts and case studies. Surprisingly, it seems relatively little is really known about exactly how effective and affective anaesthetic is. Despite that, I found this book an oddly reassuring study.’ North and South NZ ‘Kate Cole-Adams has written a book that defies familiar categories. It is a personal memoir, a history, a scientific study, and a philosophical enquiry into the unconscious, and by drawing all these strands together the author has delivered a masterpiece.’ Jamie Grant, head judge, Waverley Council Nib Literary Awards ‘This is a surprising delight of a book about the invention and use of anaesthetics, but it is also about the concept of consciousness. It is a book about the fear of death, the fear of a lack of control, the fear of an imminent operation, the way a life can be plagued by a general feeling of anxiety and how dreams play a part in this.’ Krissy Kneen, Feminist Writers Festival, Favourite Reads of 2017 ‘Kate Cole-Adams’s Anaesthesia propelled me towards new ways of thinking about thinking itself: experience and consciousness and how we make in and make up this world.’ Ashley Hay, Australian, Books of the Year 2017

Ethical issues facing anesthesiologists are more far-reaching than those involving virtually any other medical specialty. In this clinical ethics textbook, authors from across the USA, Canada and Europe draw on ethical principles and practical knowledge to provide a realistic understanding of ethical anesthetic practice. The result is a compilation of expert opinion and international perspectives from clinical leaders in anesthesiology. Building on real-life, case-based problems, each chapter is clinically focused and addresses both practical and theoretical issues. Topics include general operating room care, pediatric and obstetrical patient care, the intensive care unit, pain practice, research and publication, as well as discussions of lethal injection, disclosure of errors, expert witness testimony, triage in disaster and conflicts of interest with industry. An important reference tool for any anesthesiologist, whether clinical or research-oriented, this book is especially valuable for physicians involved in teaching residents and students about the ethical aspects of anesthesia practice.

If the apocalypse is going to happen, now seems like the time. From hybrid killer bees to domestic terrorism, catastrophe bingo has displaced baseball as America's pastime. No one seems to have a strategy. Until now. Like our modern world, the discipline of anesthesiology is filled with long periods of stressful uncertainty interrupted by unpredictable catastrophes. Vigilance shares how anesthesiologists utilize statistical thinking, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics to generate stability and prevent complications in the operating room-and how these same strategies apply to our broader systemic problems. Anesthesiologists have perfected their methodology over the last seventy years. Death from anesthesia complications has fallen more than 98 percent despite increasing patient and surgical complexity. Learn how to recognize the invisible synergistic systems that control our modern world, how to intervene decisively when disasters happen, and how to manage sudden catastrophes to prevent harm. Vigilance is a guide for thriving in our new, uncertain world.

The Oxford Handbook of Anaesthesia has been completely updated for the second edition. All chapters have been rewritten and a number of new expert authors have been brought on board. Additional new material includes anaesthesia for the critically ill, and a comprehensive section on anaesthetic risk including anaesthetic risk tables. The first section deals with preoperative issues affecting the administration of anaesthesia. Practical advice is provided covering the impact of medical disease on anaesthesia. The second section describes practical anaesthetic techniques for surgical specialties, including most subspecialties such as thoracic and neuroanaesthesia. Separate, comprehensive sections on paediatric and obstetric anaesthesia are included. The management of emergencies arising during anaesthesia are fully covered with helpful action plans and algorithms throughout. Uncommon conditions and their management are included, and there is an extensive drug formulary and guide to infusion drugs. As with the first edition, this new edition will be the essential handbook for anaesthetists, both junior and experienced, for registrars and those sitting exams, as well as ODPs and nurses involved in theatre area work and pre-assessment. It is the one book for anyone working in anaesthesia to keep to hand at all times!