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Open heart : a cardiac surgeon's stories of life and death on the operating table / Stephen Westaby.

by Westaby, Stephen.

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Basic Books, 2017.

Westaby, Stephen.

Heart -- Surgery -- Anecdotes.

Heart -- Transplantation -- History.

Heart, Artificial -- History.

Heart surgeons -- Great Britain -- Biography.

Cardiologists -- Great Britain -- Biography.

9780465094837 (hc.)

x, 287 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Includes index.

When 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. As he soon understood, this detachment was a crucial survival strategy. 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? Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine. He 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. An unforgettable insight into how to push back death, until nothing is left to do but to accept it. Stephen Westaby is a pioneer in artificial heart technology and serves as Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, England.

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