Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeons Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table

In gripping prose, one of the worlds leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from deathWhen Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during openheart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. As he soon understood, this detachment is a crucial survival strategy in a profession where death is only a heartbeat away. In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be. With astonishing compassion, he recounts harrowing and sometimes hopeful 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 heart transplantonly to die once its in place.For readers of Atul Gawandes Being Mortal and of Henry Marshs Do No Harm, Open Heart offers a soulbaring account of a life spent in constant confrontation with death.