Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeon?s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.43 (973 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 046509483X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-04-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
With astonishing compassion and candor, Dr. As he soon understood, this detachment was a crucial survival strategy. Westaby recounts the fraught and alarming stories from his operating room: we meet a pulseless man who lives with an electric heart pump, an expecting mother who refuses surgery unless the doctors let her pregnancy reach full term, and a baby who gets a transplanted heart-only to die once it's in place. One of the world's leading heart surgeons shares the hard-won lessons of a life lived where failure and death are just a heartbeat awayWhen Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during an open heart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. In a profession where failure is literally a heartbeat away and the cost of that failure is death, how else could he live with the consequences of his performance? In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be. For readers of Atul Gawande and of Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, Open Heart offers unforgettable insight into how to push back death, until nothing is left to do but to accept it.
The deaths that truly madden him are those that could have been prevented with available technologies."--New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice. "In this unsentimental account, a British doctor offers gripping stories of operations and blasts the National Health Service for failing to pay for lifesaving equipment
"A breathtaking personal account of a renown surgeon" according to Daniel. Surgeons are not those kind of people, who have their own hearts open as often as they do that to others. Stephen Westaby account of a lifetime of a career is a good one for even those far in the field of management - learning how organization, wits and courage mark a sound line between life and death.. Five Stars Tara Fussell Eye opening. Well written.. Helen D said A heart surgeon's reflections on his patients and career.. I thoroughly enjoyed Stephen Westaby’s memoir Open Heart, A Cardiac Surgeon’s Story of Life and Death on the Operating Table. This book is a collection of stories about his patients who he helped over the years with cardiac surgery. He was a pioneer in the use of the left ventricular assist device that saved the lives of patients with heart failure. I found him to be humble in describing his accomplishments and frustrated with the national health care system in England. So many patients could have been helped but were re