The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center [Kindle Edition]
Author: Charles R. Morris | Language: English | ISBN: B001SSRC2C | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center
Download for free books The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
Download for free books The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link
"Insightful and filled with verve...electrifying."—Wall Street Journal
Hailed as "an astute book of enormous importance" (Sherwin Nuland), The Surgeons follows the team at one of the world's premier cardiac surgery and transplant centers. Given unprecedented access, Charles R. Morris recounts in thrilling detail a late-night against-the-clock "harvest run" to secure a precious transplantable organ, the heartbreaking story of a child's failed transplant, and more. Along the way, Morris reflects on how doctors really think, rising health care costs, and the future of health care in America. Books with free ebook downloads available The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center [Kindle Edition]- File Size: 470 KB
- Print Length: 336 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (October 17, 2008)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001SSRC2C
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #465,186 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
The Surgeons is an intriguing glimpse into the lives and work of the heart surgeons at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, one of the world's top cardiac surgery centers.
Author Charles Morris provides an intimate look at the work of these virtuosos who hold lives in their hands every day. We get to know such artisans as Craig Smith, head of cardiothoracic surgery, who is well-known for doing the quadruple bypass on former President Bill Clinton; Eric Rose, a cardiothoracic surgeon and chairman of the Department of Surgery; Mehmet Oz, senior adult cardiac surgeon, well-known author of three New York Times best-sellers, and regular contributor on Oprah; and many others, whose names will be better known as a result of this book.
From his unparalleled access to attend surgeries and meetings, Morris gives us an incredibly insightful view into how these surgeons think. It's a real-world, insider's look at the people, problems, and politics in a major hospital. As an example, he explores the politics between the surgeons and the interventional cardiologists, and talks about how their disciplines are converging.
The book tackles a variety of topics, from how the heart works and the history of heart surgery to health care policy and directions for high tech medicine. It even explores the innovative new business models pursued by Columbia-Presbyterian. An intriguing bit of trivia that Morris reveals is that Thomas J. Watson, former chairman of IBM, made a personal project of financing and developing the heart-lung bypass machine, which is still used today in many open-heart surgeries.
Morris excels at sharing the stories of surgeries and the patients benefiting from them. We get an intimate look at patients that made it and those that didn't.
With amazing detail, "The Surgeons: Life and Death in a Top Heart Center" provides a view of many behind-the-scene challenges of modern cardiac surgery. I spent four days as a patient in the cardiac unit at New York's Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital while author Charles Morris shadowed surgeons "unrestricted" in the same unit for an entire year.
It is quite fascinating to read what doctors are thinking, feeling and doing while life is literally in their hands. Cardiac surgery is one of the few procedures in which, at every moment, "the patient is at risk of sudden death." As a result of many long years of medical training and incredible sacrifice, cardiothoracic surgeons provide their patients the gift we all crave, longevity and quality of life.
Charles Morris writes a fascinating description of what happens once a heart patient is anesthetized on the operating table. Prep work takes about an hour. The patient is "shaved, and painted almost head to toe with bright red antiseptic; various monitoring leads and hookups are affixed around the body, breathing and imaging tubes pushed down the throat, a flow monitoring catheter is threaded through the jugular vein" into the heart, and a urinary catheter into the bladder. The patient is wrapped with yards and yards of sterile tape and gauze and "eyes are taped shut."
When Columbia-Presbyterian heart surgeon Craig Smith, MD recently opened my chest, the mitral and aortic valves were beyond repair with healed endocarditis and a worn out aortic root. In 8.5 hours of surgery, Dr. Smith skillfully removed scar tissue and replaced both valves with bovine (cow) tissue and the aorta with a 28mm graft.
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