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Hi everyone,

I'm back with some more vocab questions.

Please help me understand the meaning of the words in bold:

The patient's consciousness serves to edit the normal prattle of surgery, and any mild emergency is met with suppressed anxiety.

(The context is brain surgery).

Thank you!

B.

What an odd sentence!


Prattle means idle talk, gossip.

I take it that the patient is conscious during surgery, and this causes the patient to interpret (edit) what the surgeons are saying so that any idle comment like 'oops' adds to the anxiety of the patient.

I'm not really sure why a patient would be conscious during brain surgery though!






My site: www.roadtogrammar.com

I remember watching a TV programme about brain surgery where the patient was conscious during the operation. He was able to talk to the surgeons, and his responses helped them decide which parts of the brain needed working on. The brain itself feels no pain, so all he needed was a local anesthetic to stop him from getting a headache when they opened him up.

Yes, totally true. The brain feels no pain. And if the patient is conscious, he can help the surgeons by telling them which part of his body reacts to the procedures they do inside his head. A bit weird, I admit, but true.

Thanks for the help!

B.