Editorial Review:

The Healing Blade is a true story. The narrative spans a period of years as the author spends hundreds of days and nights following the neurosurgeons and residents at one of the world's leading neurological institutes as they struggle to save lives, to compete in an ever more difficult medical world, and to learn the innermost secrets of the brain.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

Brains...:

If you like to read about the unfortunate accidents that occur daily without our knowledge, pick up this book and find out what gets done to remedy some of those grimm situations. The in depth description and multiple examples given of the use of hypothermic arrest for repairing deep brain aneurysms put you right in the operating room. A few grammatical errors and an unessesary Arizona history lesson bog the main body and, at times, the author seems to jump around but, all in all, a good read. I learned a... more info

Not as interesting or well-written as I had hoped:

The book's subject matter is intrinsically interesting, but the writing is a bit clumsy and the organisation of the chapters seems chaotic. Also, there is a lot of repetition (ie explanations of certain neurosurgical procedures, and all of the stories pertain to a certain type of innovation in neurosugrey--which is interesting but doesn't vary much from case to case) and any suspense in the stories is very muted. Also, the book fawns its neurosurgical "heroes." It begins to feel like you are reading a mash... more info

Unravelling the mystery of brain surgery:

Jerry, our 42 yr. old son-in-law had a burst brain aneurysm 2 yrs ago and was operated on by Dr. Zabranski. He is continuing to recover, but his short-term memory is still not dependable. This book gave us so much information about the "work" that these docs do. How they go through each procedure, step by step, before beginning. When our kids went back for a return visit 1 yr later. Dr. Z kept them for about 45 min. We know that these recoveries are not common, and he has no physical deficits from it. We... more info

neurosurgery spotlighting:

It is always good to read about the way discoveries are put into use. This book lets us into the most minute of details of trying to "fix" a person in that most secretive of places: the brain.
I have had a number of neurosurgeries and know the results but this book helps one to learn the intricasies.
An interesting contrast is A Pained Life, by Carol Jay Levy, ISBN: 1-4134-0609-2, written by a patient who has undergone many neurosurgical procedures.

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