Heart operations today are quite common and relatively low-risk, but in the beginning it was just the opposite. Cardiac operations were reserved for desperately ill patients. The author documents this dramatic transition with profiles of 38 surgeons who were active between 1940 and 1985. The profiles are edited transcripts of interviews videotaped between 1996 and 2004. They tell of the development of new techniques such as the "blue baby operation," the first heart-lung machine, the first artificial heart valve, and the first coronary bypass operation. They also tell the unusual life stories of the surgeons and allude to professional and institutional rivalries. A particularly valuable part of the book is the author's brief history of cardiac surgery, designed to orient the reader for reading the profiles that follow.

Much anticipated, the Second Edition of Surgery: Basic Science and Clinical Evidence features fully revised and updated information on the evidence-based practice of surgery, including significant new sections on trauma and critical care and the often challenging surgical care of unique populations, including elderly, pediatric, immunocompromised, and obese patients as well as timely new chapters on the pre- and post-operative care of the cardiac surgery patient, intestinal transplantation, surgical infections, the fundamentals of cancer genetics and proteomics. Also new to this edition are discussions of electrosurgical instruments, robotics, imaging modalities, and other emerging technologies influencing the modern practice of surgery. Clinically focused sections in gastrointestinal, vascular, cardiothoracic, transplant, and cancer surgery enable the surgeon to make decisions based upon the most relevant data in modern surgical practice. The text is enhanced by more than 1,000 illustrations and hundreds of the signature evidence-based tables that made the first edition of SURGERY an instant classic.

"This book is the first complete history of the development of heart surgery. Its story ranges from the observations of the ancient Greeks through early efforts to repair heart wounds in the nineteenth century to the extraordinary advances of the present day. Noted heart surgeon Harris B. Shumacker has scoured the vast literature on heart surgery in many languages and has succeeded in untangling the complex strands of a fascinating story. An active and respected participant in the last half-century of this history, Shumacker brings to his narrative an experts insights and a wealth of first-hand experience." "As a backdrop for what is to come, Shumacker surveys the prehistory of modern heart surgery, but his story begins in earnest in the 1920s and 1930s, when the first attempts were made to operate on the heart and adjacent vessels to correct congenital malformations. He describes the early operations on the great vessels and surface of the heart; intracardiac manipulations upon the beating, functioning, and unsupported heart; and operations carried out within the opened heart." "With the meticulous care of a surgeon, Shumacker retraces the incremental growth in our knowledge of the human heart and its repair with clear discussions of each innovative procedure, both the successes and the failures. He pays special attention to clarifying the individual contributions of the many doctors and researchers throughout the world who have played a role in this still-developing story." "Shumacker concludes with the revolutionary developments of contemporary heart surgery: the heart-lung machine, deep hypothermia and circulatory arrest, cardiac support devices, heart transplants, and the artificial heart. Here is a comprehensive history and an important resource for the medical professional and the medical historian." --Book Jacket.

Few of the great stories of medicine are as palpably dramatic as the invention of open-heart surgery, yet, until now, no journalist has ever brought all of the thrilling specifics of this triumph to life. This is the story of the surgeon many call the father of open-heart surgery, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, who, along with colleagues at University Hospital in Minneapolis and a small band of pioneers elsewhere, accomplished what many experts considered to be an impossible feat: He opened the heart, repaired fatal defects, and made the miraculous routine. Acclaimed author G. Wayne Miller draws on archival research and exclusive interviews with Lillehei and legendary pioneers such as Michael DeBakey and Christiaan Barnard, taking readers into the lives of these doctors and their patients as they progress toward their landmark achievement. In the tradition of works by Richard Rhodes and Tracy Kidder, King of Hearts tells the story of an important and gripping piece of forgotten science history.

This text describes and illustrates with some 700 detailed anatomic and surgical drawings the whole spectrum of surgical procedures employed to treat acquired and congenital diseases of the heart and great vessels in adults and children. A rather traditional chapter on history of cardiac surgery precedes chapters dedicated to quality improvement, followed by ICU management in adult and pediatric cardiac surgery, and techniques of extracorporeal circulation in both age groups. Further special topics are cardiovascular tissue engineering, minimally invasive cardiac surgery, endovascular treatment of aortic diseases, and cardiac assist devices, including total artificial heart. Written by 71 internationally recognized experts from 40 cardiac units in Central Europe and North America, this book will be invaluable not only for both novice and experienced surgeons, but also for all physicians, nurses, and technicians caring for patients with heart disease of any type, at any age.

This text, published in the profession's centenary year, traces the history of cardiac surgery from ancient times to the present, detailing clinical developments with facsimilies of the original articles, consent forms from the first heart transplant, newspaper articles, and correspondence. The text follows a set pattern, describing the historical background to each new procedure, facsimilies of the original articles, bibliography of the main clinicians, and a commentary putting each development into its historical context.

The book provides a clear overview of the various research stages of cardiac surgery, interventional cardiology, and cardiac anesthesia. It also deals with recent advances in minimally invasive surgery, robotic surgery, and many other innovations introduced in this field. However, aim of this volume is not only to describe the evolution of the discipline, but also to give the occasion of revisiting old and forgotten ideas that could be used successfully also nowadays if supported by modern technologies. With contributions by renowned international experts, the volume will be a very useful tool for students, residents, cardiac surgery and anesthesia professionals, cardiologists, biomedical engineers, and researchers.

Based on extensive reviews of medical literature and archives, this historical perspective on medical decision making and risk highlights personal, professional, and community outcomes.

The bestselling author of Intern and Doctored tells the story of the thing that makes us tick For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in Heart: A History, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that have changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between key historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little-known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ. He introduces us to Daniel Hale Williams, the African American doctor who performed the world’s first open heart surgery in Gilded Age Chicago. We meet C. Walton Lillehei, who connected a patient’s circulatory system to a healthy donor’s, paving the way for the heart-lung machine. And we encounter Wilson Greatbatch, who saved millions by inventing the pacemaker—by accident. Jauhar deftly braids these tales of discovery, hubris, and sorrow with moving accounts of his family’s history of heart ailments and the patients he’s treated over many years. He also confronts the limits of medical technology, arguing that future progress will depend more on how we choose to live than on the devices we invent. Affecting, engaging, and beautifully written, Heart: A History takes the full measure of the only organ that can move itself.

The story told in this book begins in about 1700, when the first attempts were made to study the diseased heart in life (the subject matter of cardiology), as distinct from its appearance after death; it ends, rather arbitrarily, in 1970. The account of the development of knowledge of heart disease is mainly chronological with emphasis on the fruitful consequences of the cross-fertilization of clinical practice with pathological anatomy at the beginning of the nineteenth century and with physiology at the end. In addition, shorter chapters deals with such topics as specific disease entities, methods of investigation, cardiac surgery and the work of two individuals - Peter Latham, an example of a physician practising with today's clinical skills but a very imperfect knowledge of the pathogenesis of heart disease and Etienne Marey, an early exponent of the clinical physiology which would, in time, throw light on that pathogenesis.