Letting Go by Atul Gawande from New Yorker magazine

RMcCants (United States of America)
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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. chemotherapy
    the use of drugs to treat disease, especially cancer
    But there were chemotherapy options, notably a relatively new drug called Tarceva, which targets a gene mutation commonly found in lung cancers of female non-smokers.
  2. mesothelioma
    a form of carcinoma of the mesothelium lining lungs or abdomen or heart; usually associated with exposure to asbestos dust
    In 1985, the paleontologist and writer Stephen Jay Gould published an extraordinary essay entitled “The Median Isn’t the Message,” after he had been given a diagnosis, three years earlier, of abdominal mesothelioma, a rare and lethal cancer usually
  3. metastatic
    relating to or affected by metastasis
    Or, to put it another way, if you were the one who had metastatic cancer—or, for that matter, a similarly advanced case of emphysema or congestive heart failure—what would you want your doctors to do?
  4. defibrillation
    treatment by stopping fibrillation of heart muscles
    In 2008, the national Coping with Cancer project published a study showing that terminally ill cancer patients who were put on a mechanical ventilator, given electrical defibrillation or chest compressions, or admitted, near death, to intensive car
  5. tracheotomy
    an operation to allow air to flow through the windpipe
    Her husband had died after a long illness, with a feeding tube and a tracheotomy, and she had mentioned that she didn’t want to die that way.
  6. gene mutation
    a mutation due to an intramolecular reorganization of a gene
    But there were chemotherapy options, notably a relatively new drug called Tarceva, which targets a gene mutation commonly found in lung cancers of female non-smokers.
  7. cardiopulmonary resuscitation
    an emergency procedure consisting of external cardiac massage and artificial respiration; the first treatment for a person who has collapsed and has no pulse and has stopped breathing; attempts to restore circulation of the blood and prevent death or brain damage due to lack of oxygen
    But the third who did were far less likely to undergo cardiopulmonary resuscitation or be put on a ventilator or end up in an intensive-care unit.
  8. mutation
    a change or alteration in form or qualities
    But there were chemotherapy options, notably a relatively new drug called Tarceva, which targets a gene mutation commonly found in lung cancers of female non-smokers.
Created on Sun Aug 15 08:56:25 EDT 2010 (updated Sun Aug 15 08:57:44 EDT 2010)

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