Hi there.
Shankar here.
Today's episode is the last one in our series called you 2.0.
If you haven't heard the other episodes, please take a listen.
This one comes from our archives.
It's about a tool that humans have used for hundreds of years to avoid a common mistake.
This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantu.
All of us have days when, despite our best efforts, everything just goes wrong.
Sometimes terribly wrong.
It was a devastating problem.
Atul Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
He's also a writer.
You might have read his work in the New Yorker or in slate.
A few years ago, Atul was at work, operating on a patient he refers to as Mister Hagerman.
I was taking out a tumor of the adrenal gland laparoscopically.
Hed performed this procedure dozens of times before, but this time was particularly tricky.
Mister Hagermans tumor was behind his liver, nestled tightly against an important blood vessel.
The main blood vessel, returning the blood of the body to the heart.
Its known as the vena cava.