Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeon's Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table

by Stephen Westaby

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465094844
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	06/20/2017
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 The Ether Dome 7

2 Humble Beginnings 17

3 Lord Brock's Boots 27

4 Township Boy 37

5 The Girl with No Name 51

6 The Man with Two Hearts 75

7 Saving Julie's Heart 97

8 The Black Banana 115

9 Domino Heart 135

10 Life on a Battery 153

11 Anna's Story 173

12 Mr. Clarke 193

13 Adrenaline Rush 201

14 Despair 217

15 Double Jeopardy 229

16 Your Life in Their Hands 243

Epilogue 257

Acknowledgments 263

Glossary 269

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

Westaby's book will be a balm to the hearts of curmudgeons everywhere. Sidestepping the contemporary hand-wringing about the lack of empathy in medicine, Westaby, a British surgeon, positions empathy as a threat to the surgical career: "Heart surgery," he writes, "needs to be an impersonal, technical exercise." Westaby learned this lesson young, when desperately trying—and failing—to save the life of a child. Refreshingly, Westaby does not put a positive spin on suffering or cleave to false optimism.

The New York Times Book Review - Rachel Pearson

"In this unsentimental account, a British doctor offers gripping stories of operations and blasts the National Health Service for failing to pay for lifesaving equipment. The deaths that truly madden him are those that could have been prevented with available technologies."—New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice

"In Open Heart, British cardiac surgeon Stephen Westaby shares often astonishing stories of his own operating-room experiences, illuminating the science and art of his specialty through the patients whose lives he has saved and, in some cases, lost.... What makes Dr. Westaby's stories so compelling...is that he can't quite suppress his humanity."—Wall Street Journal

"Refreshingly, Westaby does not put a positive spin on suffering or cleave to false optimism... a reminder that nationalized medicine might ease the racial and economic injustices that currently determine which people die too soon, but it wouldn't spell the end of medically preventable deaths."—New York Times Book Review

"Westaby's highly readable Open Heart is part memoir, part how-to (perform open-heart surgery, that is) and part All Creatures Great and Small-style reflection, with stories throughout about cases he's encountered during his journey from eager medical student to seen-it-all senior physician... a heart-tugger, and a fascinating read."—BookPage

"A cracking example of a thriving sub-genre of autobiography, the medical memoir. Anyone who enjoyed the 2014 bestseller Do No Harm by the brain surgeon Henry Marsh, a friend of Westaby's, will relish [this book], too.... Each story is gripping, written in a vivid, almost brutal way that matches the blood and gore of cardiac surgery." —Financial Times

"[Westaby's] writing is bluff, workmanlike and thrilling... a frank and absorbing memoir by a man who has done about as much direct good to his fellow human beings as it is possible to do in one lifetime." —The Times, Book of the Week

"British surgeon and artificial heart pioneer Stephen Westaby's Open Heart is a thrilling memoir of some of his most challenging cases.... Each case is more astonishing than the next." —Shelf Awareness

"[A] dazzling memoir." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Westaby is everything you would hope from a maverick surgical genius: authoritative, engaged, passionate and opinionated. His book, annoyingly well written for someone who has penned only medical papers and handbooks, reads like a thriller, except with rather more corpses." —The Times (UK)

"A full-frontal and thrilling portrayal. Each story in this fascinating book brings a new nail-biting surgical adventure.... A gifted surgeon, Westaby is also a natural writer.... [Open Heart] succeeds on many levels: political battle cry, chronicle of bloody feats, history of modern cardiology, tribute to patients and paean to surgery."
—Daily Telegraph

"Dr. Westaby, a master cardiac surgeon, seamlessly assumes the role of a master storyteller, presenting a lifetime of experience that is as informative as it is riveting."—Joseph S. Coselli, M.D., professor of cardiac surgery at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Heart Institute

"A first-rate memoir from a British heart surgeon.... required reading for medical students and hospital-show junkies but also for anyone curious to learn about hearts and the heroic measures to save them." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

From the Publisher

Narrator Gordon Griffin captures the empathy, frustration, and passion of Dr. Stephen Westaby, a pioneering heart surgeon in Britain. Westaby has conducted all manner of high-risk surgeries, including implanting artificial heart pumps before any other British doctor had done so. (The patients have no pulse afterwards!) He is snarky about bureaucrats who are more interested in keeping down costs than in doing anything new or investing in technology that save lives, and he has plenty of insults for the National Health Service. Griffin’s narration is wonderful—lively and expressive, with an accent that suggests Westaby’s working-class background. Griffin’s timing and tone perfectly capture Westaby’s wry, almost curmudgeonly, sense of humor—he quips that a patient is so sick he is unlikely to survive a haircut, but after an artificial heart is implanted, he lives for several years. A.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Gordon Griffin captures the empathy, frustration, and passion of Dr. Stephen Westaby, a pioneering heart surgeon in Britain. Westaby has conducted all manner of high-risk surgeries, including implanting artificial heart pumps before any other British doctor had done so. (The patients have no pulse afterwards!) He is snarky about bureaucrats who are more interested in keeping down costs than in doing anything new or investing in technology that save lives, and he has plenty of insults for the National Health Service. Griffin’s narration is wonderful—lively and expressive, with an accent that suggests Westaby’s working-class background. Griffin’s timing and tone perfectly capture Westaby’s wry, almost curmudgeonly, sense of humor—he quips that a patient is so sick he is unlikely to survive a haircut, but after an artificial heart is implanted, he lives for several years. A.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

★ 2017-04-16
A first-rate memoir from a British heart surgeon.Westaby, a consultant cardiac surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, credits his grandfather for teaching him how to paint—for "connecting his hand to his brain" when he was a child­—but seeing his painful deterioration from heart failure inspired the author's pursuit of heart surgery—that and a mid-1950s American TV show featuring heart operations. So it was that the dirt-poor boy from a steel town outside of London made it to Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and on to a distinguished career. Following brief biographical chapters and some helpful heart anatomy lessons, the text is a series of you-are-there accounts of Westaby working in operating rooms around the world. In spare prose, he describes what he and his surgical team do to close a congenital hole in an infant's heart, repair a mitral valve, transplant a donor heart, or implant an artificial one in the form of a ventricular assist pump. Readers will not soon forget the author's stories about a baby in dire need of surgery to remove a heart tumor or the gang member stabbed close to his heart. Despite the cool detachment espoused by specialists engaged in daily life-or-death battles, Westaby comes across as caring and compassionate. This also manifests in his inveighing against Britain's National Health Service for not covering costly but lifesaving pumps. (Many of the pumps Westaby implanted were paid for by private charities.) The NHS also insists that heart surgeons' success and failure rates be published, which, since heart surgery is inherently hazardous, Westaby sees as an excellent way to discourage future practitioners. Indeed, his own accounts do not always end happily. Now, following thousands of surgeries, the author's hand is permanently disfigured, and he no longer operates. He continues as a consultant, recognized for developing new surgical techniques and advancing artificial heart technology. Not without some gore but required reading for medical students and hospital-show junkies but also for anyone curious to learn about hearts and the heroic measures to save them.

Kirkus Reviews