A study has found that many patients undergoing coronary bypass surger

Question

Project SC Butler: Sentence Correction (SC2) 
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A study has found that many patients  undergoing coronary bypass surgery and developing long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing  families’ financial security and taxing an already strained health system.

A) undergoing coronary bypass surgery and developing long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing

B) undergoing coronary bypass surgery who develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stresses

C) who undergo coronary bypass surgery and develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing

D) who undergo coronary bypass surgery develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing

E) who undergo coronary bypass surgery develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care and stresses

generis · Accepted Answer

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

Project SC Butler: Sentence Correction (SC2)

THE PROMPT  
 
• Meaning?
The sentence indicates that the requirements of extended and expensive medical care can stress families’ financial security and further tax the health system.

THE OPTIONS

• FRAGMENT: no working verb 
→ in this sentence, no working verb exists
--  undergoing  and  developing  are participles (verbINGs) that modify the noun  patients 
____ING words themselves are not working verbs. They can be  paired  with an auxiliary (helping) verb, as in  are undergoing  to create a working verb, but ___ING words alone are not verbs.

-- if a working verb existed in what would be the previous clause  ,  stressing  (and  taxing ) would modify that clause. As is often the case,  stressing  would present the result or effect of something mentioned earlier.
ELIMINATE A

• subject/verb agreement
→ the singular verb  stresses  does not agree with the plural subject  patients

• lack of parallelism
→ in the nonunderlined portion, the word  and  before  taxing  is a parallelism marker.
We should expect to see  stressing ABC and taxing XYZ. 
In this construction, though, no verb exists in the first part of the sentence, so we try to pair the verb  stresses  and the subject  patients , a pairing that does not work. 
This option is a mess. The word that should be the verb does not agree with the subject and is not parallel to the modifier  taxing .
(If we saw  stress , it would agree with  patients  but not be parallel to  taxing . A word cannot be both the main verb of a clause and an adjectival modifier.)
ELIMINATE B

• FRAGMENT: no working verb
→ same problem as that in option A
The subject is presumably  patients. 
Whatever the subject is supposed to be, the verbs  undergo  and  develop  are "eaten up" by the relative pronoun  who.  The pronoun  who  does refer to  patients,  but who requires its own verbs. The verb  require  is "eaten up" by the relative pronoun  that,  which refers to  problems .
ELIMINATE C

• I do not see any errors

• the plural verb  develop  agrees with the plural subject  patients,  and  stressing  modifies the entire previous clause, as I explained beneath option B
KEEP

• subject/verb disagreement
→ the singular verb  stresses  does not agree with the plural subject of the that-clause,  problems

• lacks parallelism 
→ the word  and  is a parallelism marker
--  Problems  have two characteristics: 
(1) they require costly medical care and (2) they stress financial security. 
-- the plural verb  require  is not parallel to the singular verbs  stresses .
ELIMINATE E

The correct answer is D.

COMMENTS

devtashrey  and  vijayram24  , welcome to SC Butler.

I accidentally linked this day's questions incorrectly to  Bunuel's  SC Butler questions.

This question is now correctly linked in the SC Butler Master Directory,  here,  in which hundreds of questions are listed beneath the spoilers, and on the main SC Butler thread in  this post, here . 
(The links in the Master Directory and in the post are the same. The link in the Master Directory never goes away, but the link in the thread will disappear next month.)

The analysis here ranges from good to very good.
Kudos to all.

Stay safe, everyone.

vijayram24 · Answer

D as it aptly describes the cause and effect .

Posted from my mobile device

winterschool · Answer

A study has found that many patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery and developing long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing families’ financial security and taxing an already strained health system.

A)  undergoing coronary bypass surgery and developing long-term medical problems  that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing  Incorrect

many patients is a sentence fragment

B)  undergoing coronary bypass surgery  who develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care,  stresses   Incorrect

many patients is a sentence fragment
parallelism problem - .............., stresses ..........and taxing ........

C)  who undergo coronary bypass surgery and develop long-term medical problems  that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing  Incorrect

many patients is a sentence fragment

D)  who undergo coronary bypass surgery develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing   Correct

E) who undergo coronary bypass surgery develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care and  stresses   Incorrect

parallelism problem - ..............and stresses ..........and taxing ........

devtashrey · Answer

The key to the question lies solely in the meaning of the sentence.
The sentence means that patients who undergo bypass surgery develop long term medical problems which require extended and often extensive medical care and this stresses ( note cause and effect here) their patients family more...
Hence using the -ing modifier , stressing, to show cause and effect is appropriate here. 
Other than D no option justifies the meaning more clearly.

generis · Answer

The official explanation is  here .

jaisonsunny77 · Answer

A study has found that many patients   undergoing coronary bypass surgery and developing long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing   families’ financial security and taxing an already strained health system.

If we take a look at this prompt, we can logically infer that "long term medical problems" are developed after undergoing the "bypass surgery".

With the use of "and", (A) and (C) literally imply that both the bypass surgery and developing long-term medical problems occur at the same time. This is certainly not the intended meaning of the passage. Hence, we can eliminate (A) and (C).

B)  undergoing coronary bypass surgery who develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stresses   - (B) literally implies that it is the surgery itself that develops the long-term medical problems and not the patients themselves. This does not make sense, so we can eliminate (B).

D)  who undergo coronary bypass surgery develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care, stressing  - here, we have a clean sentence with the correct use of an -ing clause at the end of the underlined portion. Additionally, the use of "and" correctly compares two like terms: extended and expensive (both adjectives). Hence,  (D) is your right answer .

E)  who undergo coronary bypass surgery develop long-term medical problems that require extended and often expensive medical care  and  stresses  - With the use of the second "and" at the end of the underlined portion, (E) literally implies that the patients themselves are directly stressing "families’ financial security..." whereas its the "long-term medical problems" that's creating the "stress". Hence, we can eliminate (E).

A study has found that many patients undergoing coronary bypass surger

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GMAT Sentence Correction (SC - EA only) Questions

A study has found that many patients undergoing coronary bypass surger

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards