DavidMcC wrote:If that is true, then there is no good solution.
Not so, the "good solution" should be whatever the medical team deems to be best for the patient. That's a rather idealised view of medical practise, but at its core it is what should be.
Do the risks of anaesthesia (including the long term complications) outweigh the benefits? If the answer is yes, then ideally whatever the complications are down the line, they are less worse than whatever problem is going to be corrected by surgery under anaesthesia.
And this risk vs benefits analysis isn't just limited to anaesthesia. Most medical treatments that a doctor will prescribe you, have a list of potential side effects as long as your arm, although realistically the best known/most likely side effects are the ones a good doctor will have in mind when making a prescription.
In my own experience - prescribing anti-depressants was decision between either a) a patient who was a suicidal or b) who would not be suicidal, but might experience fatigue, a repression emotions and some other side effects I'm not going into.
Patient might kill himself vs patient feels fairly shitty.
Clearly there is no good scenario, but the less worse scenario is the patient not killing himself one.
"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion." - Arthur C Clarke
"'Science doesn't know everything' - Well science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it'd stop" - Dara O'Brian
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