Title

Title: King Of Hearts

ISBN: 0012545641

Author: G.Wayne Miller

Description: Most of us are familiar with certain pioneers in the field of heart surgery -- world-renowned surgeons such as Michael DeBakey and Christian Barnard -- but fewer know the tale of Dr. Walt Lillehei and his band of Minnesota surgeons, who were the first doctors to successfully operate deep inside the heart. In KING OF HEARTS, a book Jonathan Harr has called "THE RIGHT STUFF of open heart surgery," G. Wayne Miller traces the exploits of this hardy band of medical men. In this excerpt, Miller recounts the very first attempts at open heart surgery, which would inspire and motivate Lillehei to pursue that discipline.

Rewiew:

From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly
Open-heart surgery is now almost routine in the United States, but just a few decades ago the idea of repairing cardiac defects by cutting into a living human heart was almost unthinkable. Yet thanks to the efforts of a talented few who refused to believe it couldn't be done, open-heart surgery became a reality in the 1950s. Chief among its pioneers was the intense and flamboyant Minnesota surgeon Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, whose story Miller tells here in thriller style. Miller, a staff writer for the Providence Journal, re-creates the anxieties and excitement of an era poised on the brink of astonishing technological advances but stymied by a disease that killed more than 625,000 Americans annually. Lillehei was convinced that open-heart surgery was the answer--but how to divert blood from the heart and still keep the patient alive? Lillehei's first attempts, in 1954, used a complex and risky donor-patient blood exchange. Several of his first patients died; behind his back, nurses began calling him "murderer." By 1955, however, Lillehei and his colleague Richard DeWall perfected a simplified heart-lung machine made with beer hose and plastic tubing ("a high school science fair project was more complex," Miller observes) that finally allowed Lillehei to achieve his dream of "bringing advanced open-heart surgery to the masses." Lillehei's innovations revolutionized cardiac surgery; many believed he would win a Nobel prize. Instead, the surgeon was disgraced when he was found guilty of tax fraud in 1973. Miller's fast-paced and scrupulously researched account reveals both the exhilaration and the tragedy of Lillehei's story. Agent, Kay McCaulay, Pimlico Agency. (Feb.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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