Open Heart: The Radical Surgeons Who Revolutionized Medicine
| Autor: | Steve Livesey |
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| Rok vydání: | 2011 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | The Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England. 93:558-558 |
| ISSN: | 1478-7083 0035-8843 |
| Popis: | It is nearly thirty years since my first exposure to cardiac surgery and in truth not much has changed since then. Of course we operate on more patients with more co-morbidities and we are undoubtedly producing better outcomes for patients requiring routine cardiac surgery but what we do and the way we do it has not changed fundamentally since then. In this fascinating book, David KC Cooper describes the events and the people who shaped them in the years before I was captivated by seeing the beating human heart. The events he describes are as cataclysmic as any in medicine — and they all occurred in the same medical specialty in a relatively short period of time. He has managed to capture what it must have felt like to have been involved through a series of anecdotal descriptions of the major developments in cardiac surgery; where possible he has interviewed the main characters; where not he has set the historical context by including library material. His style will not be to everyone’s taste for at times it is very anecdotal. To his credit he tackles the issue of Christiaan Barnard stealing a march on his mentor, Norman Shumway, in performing the first human heart transplant, with a sensitivity that shows his admiration for them both. This book will certainly appeal to anyone with an interest in cardiac surgery but it also deserves to reach a larger audience. Those with an interest in medical history will welcome this book and where some technical knowledge is required, good explanations are given in language the interested layperson would understand. The intellect, skill, determination and bravery of those involved is clearly demonstrated in Cooper’s text but one cannot help but wonder how many of these pioneers, many of then rightly deserving the description ‘maverick’, would have thrived in today’s increasingly regulated and stifling environment. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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