The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center
by Charles R. Morris
List Price:
Our Price: $9.00
You Save: $15.95 (64%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $8.54 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Charles R. MorrisEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-10-29
ISBN: 0393065626
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Book Reviews of The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center
Book Review: As a heart patient, I was fascinated!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a fascinating book, whether one is a heart patient oneself or not. The hospital in discussion is Columbia-Presbyterian in New York. Morris "embedded" himself there, staying in the cardiac area, attending surgeries sitting in the back near the nurses, attended staff meetings, all that stuff. He opens with a little history of heart surgery and an typical patient. Incidentally, although this is written for a popular audience, he does assume some slight knowledge on the part of the reader - for example, he doesn't stop to define "comorbidity" as in "Like many heart patients, Goldfarb suffers from a variety of comorbidities..." He describes how doctors and nurses "suit up" and create a "sterile field" around the patients, and then pretty much cut-for-cut describes Mr. Goldfarb's heart valve replacement.
He describes the different specializations within cardio-thoracic surgery: it's not just "heart surgeons" in general. There's the bypass specialists, the anesthesiologists, the pacemaker-and-defibrillator surgeons (he doesn't mention it, but in my experience they are usually called electrophysiologists, or EPs), the pediatric specialists.
Of particular interest: the difference between those surgeries in which the patient is put on a heart pump, and "off-pump" surgeries. The various range of outcomes of transplants. He describes a failed pediatric transplant - the patient dies. No avoiding the tough issues. The whole way the transplant process works - he goes along with a "harvest" team to get the heart from a donor, and talks about teams from other hospitals there to harvest other organs from the same donor, and what it's like to have several different teams working on one body.
Of interest to heart failure patients (of which, I am one) would be the discussion of the LVAD, and also the chapter on the development of "cath labs" used by cardiologists, which is something different from cardiac surgeons (if you've had an angiogram, you've been in a "cath lab.")
And there's a big section on "The Problem With Drug Companies" and another on how to determine "best practices" as well as some controversial issues about evaluating different studies on various practices and on rating the hospitals. If you are interested in how statistics are used, and how meta-studies that evaluate the combined results of numerous previous studies can be "gamed" to produce varying results, you'll find this section as interesting as I did. Research studies play a huge part in how the patients get treated, and it's quite useful to know that there are studies, and then there are *studies*.
It's a fascinating book - this barely begins to describe it. He's a good writer, and the book moves right along; we get to know the doctors and nurses as people. He has editorial comment as well as just description of what's going on, and it's useful input for anyone who is following the US's continuing struggle over how we provide health care and to whom.
Interestingly, I also happened, quite accidentally, to recently re-read Lewis Thomas' "The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher" - which was written about 25 years ago - and it was interesting to compare his descriptions of medical practices and hospital routines from the 1930's and 1950's to Morris's of half a century later. You might find the same pairing of readings equally interesting.
Summary of The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center
An over-the-shoulder look at a major heart surgery center, with gripping accounts from the OR to the boardroom.Americans now spend more money on hearts than on new passenger cars. To understand this remarkable trend, Charles R. Morris "embedded" himself with a surgical team at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, one of the world's premier cardiac surgery and transplant centers. Given unprecedented access, Morris witnessed sophisticated operations and observed the tense meetings where surgeons relentlessly criticize their own performance. In thrilling detail, Morris recounts a late-night against-the-clock "harvest run" to secure a precious transplantable organ; the heart-breaking story of a child's failed transplant; a trainee surgeon's brutal daily regimen; and much more. Along the way, Morris documents the fifty years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars that have been expended on creating a reliable mechanical heart, and he steps back to reflect on how doctors think and how they judge each other, what is really driving health care costs, and the future of health care policy in America.
General Books
- Medicine: General
- Health, Mind & Body: General
- Medicine: Specialties: Surgery: General
- Medicine > Special Topics > History
- Specialties > Surgery > Thoracic
- Professional & Technical > Medical > Medicine > Surgery > Thoracic & Vascular
- General Surgery
- Health, Mind & Body > Disorders & Diseases > Heart Disease
- History > Americas > United States > State & Local > New York
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in General Books
Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASAby Richard C. Hoagland, Mike Bara
Feral House; Published: 2007-10-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.49
Price in other shops:
Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connectionby John T. Cacioppo, William Patrick
W. W. Norton; Published: 2008-08-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Natureby Steven Pinker
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2008-08-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.14
Price in other shops:
Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poorby Roy Spencer
Encounter Books; Published: 2008-03-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.24
Price in other shops:
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadaversby Mary Roach
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2004-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.88
Price in other shops:
The Numeratiby Stephen Baker
Houghton Mifflin; Published: 2008-08-12; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.98
Price in other shops:
The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Authorby Richard Dawkins
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2006-05-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.01
Price in other shops:
A Short History of Nearly Everythingby Bill Bryson
Broadway; Published: 2004-09-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops:
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsessionby Daniel J. Levitin
Plume/Penguin; Published: 2007-08-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.93
Price in other shops:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutionsby Thomas S. Kuhn
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1996-12-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.53
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crashby Charles R. Morris
PublicAffairs; Published: 2008-03-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.65
Price in other shops:
Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Labby Christine Montross
Penguin Press HC, The; Published: 2007-06-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.99
Price in other shops:
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Storiesby Vincent Lam
Weinstein Books; Published: 2007-09-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.00
Price in other shops:
On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residencyby Emily R. Transue
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 2005-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.43
Price in other shops:
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Scienceby Atul Gawande
Published: 2003-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.20
Price in other shops:
Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God andDiversity on Steroidsby Julie Salamon
Penguin Press HC, The; Published: 2008-05-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.98
Price in other shops:
Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality (Vintage)by Pauline W. Chen
Vintage; Published: 2008-01-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.30
Price in other shops:
How Doctors Thinkby Jerome Groopman
Mariner Books; Published: 2008-03-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.85
Price in other shops:
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performanceby Atul Gawande
Picador; Published: 2008-01-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.56
Price in other shops:
Intern: A Doctor's Initiationby Sandeep Jauhar
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2007-12-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.84
Price in other shops: