Page 253 SR4a (last sentence)

"Once a character has been stabilized, FA, Med, and/or ,agical healing may be applied as normally."

Soooo

You can't simply use the Heal spell to heal the damage on the overflow track so that it's gone (and thereby stabilizing the char)?

Another one...Increase Attribute
"The Force of the spell must equal or exceed the (augmented) value of the attribute being affected."

Huh?
So I have an Ork with a Agi 5, does the Force of the spell HAVE to be 9? or 4 so Agi can be raised to 9 with enough hits?

Augmented, not Augmented Maximum. I.e., 'current'.

Yeah. The word "augmented" is there to imply that if your Ork buddy had Agi 4(5) due to some cyberware or adept powers, you'd need a Force 5 spell to raise it further, rather than Force 4.

You could of course do that, but this is very taxing and does not guarantee stabilization.
Let's say a BOD 4 character is 3 Boxes into overflow.
If the mage uses Heal he needs to get 3 or more successes on the spellcasting test and must resist 11 (Damage-2) drain. Should the mage achieve more than three successes the patient is conscious instantly.

If the same mage cast Stabilize all he would need is a single success on a Force 3 spell, which means only 1 drain (Overflow-2). Without further attention however his patient won't regain consciousness.

You need to do so when using mundane first aid, so the same should apply to magic healing. First you need to make sure the patient does not die on the table, then you can put him back together.

And going the Heal route takes forever. IRRC, you have to sustain a permanent spell for drain value x2 combat turns for the effect to become permanent. That means a whopping 22 combat turns with Heal vs. only 2 turns with Stabilize.

-CJ

But the effect of the healed boxes is immediate. The mage just shouldn't stop sustaining the spell before it becomes permanent. By RAW the touch condition needn't even be fulfilled during the sustaining period.

What happens if the spell sustaining is dropped before the time it takes for the spell to become Permanent?

The damage is re-applied. I don't know if you can use Heal again or not though.

Granted. I just wanted to point out, that during combat Stabilize is by far the better option to keep your fellow runners from dying.