Open Heart by Stephen Westaby

Open Heart by Stephen Westaby

In gripping prose, one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from death

When Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during 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 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 transplant-only to die once it's in place.

For readers of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and of Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, Open Heart offers a soul-baring account of a life spent in constant confrontation with death.

Stephen Westaby is a pioneer in artificial heart technology and serves as Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. He lives in Oxford, UK.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780465094837
ISBN 10	046509483X
Title	Open Heart
Author	Stephen Westaby
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Basic Books
Year published	2017-06-20
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.