Word: patients
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pain killers now in use have drawbacks. Morphine, codeine and related drugs, given by mouth or intravenously, can cause such side effects as nausea, constipation and itching. Epidural blocks can lead to similar problems. In addition, they must usually be removed before the patient goes home, even though he or she may still be in pain. Berde has found that many people are reluctant to take pain medication at home, or give it to their children, in the mistaken fear that they will become addicts...
...then return to the hospital to take care of a child who needs help, particularly one who is dying of cancer and in great pain. It is also not rare for him to get a 3 a.m. phone call from, say, India for a consultation about some young patient in pain. "He has worked almost every day of the week almost since I've known him," says his wife Evelyn...
...conditions under which Batista, 50, operates when he is in Brazil are spartan at best. There is little modern monitoring equipment at his Curitiba hospital. Instead, his technicians are instructed to look for three things: the patient's feet should be pink, to demonstrate adequate blood pressure; there should be urine output, to indicate that the patient has not lost kidney function; and the surgical drain should be clear, to show no internal bleeding. Surgeons depend on large windows in the operating room to provide adequate light for operations...
Batista first tried his heart-trimming procedure on a Brazilian patient named Rogerio Luis Mocelim. Mocelim had been suffering from constant exhaustion, and doctors told him of a surgeon who might be able to help. Batista's procedure enabled Mocelim to increase the amount of blood pumped through his body from 15% to 60%. That was three years ago. Today Mocelim drives a truck and regularly plays soccer...
Working in his subpar facilities in Curitiba, Batista becomes discouraged by the U.S. medical system's reluctance to help the sickest patients. "In America," he says, "if a doctor doesn't do anything and the patient dies, it's called a natural death. But if the doctor tries to do something to save that person and he dies, the doctor gets blamed for the death. That's backward thinking." The sickest patients excite Batista most because, he says, "they are the ones I can help the most...