‘Every surgeon carries about him a little cemetery, in which from time to time he goes to pray, a cemetery of bitterness and regret, of which he seeks the reason for certain of his failures.’—RenÉ Leriche, MD
Recently, I suffered what I consider to be a major intraoperative complication while operating on a young patient. This event occurred during a very difficult cancer operation and, in the opinion of my colleagues, was likely a consequence of the nature of the