The Angina Monologues: Stories of surgery for broken hearts

Description

A pioneering cardiac surgeon expertly sews up the heart of surgery, the health of the nation, and the NHS. The Angina Monologues speeds from the transporting of a donor's heart up the motorway hard shoulder, to cautionary stories of excessive intervention gone awry in US hospitals, to a traumatic trip to bring advanced cardiac surgery to the Palestinian West Bank. Nashef tells heart-stopping stories of transplants, bypasses, coronary artery repair, and cardiac arrest. He also delivers humane advice about medical realities rarely observed- the futility of obsessing over diet, the necessity of calculating risks, the role of decision making, the resilience of doctor and patient alike, and the threadbare brilliance of the NHS. Nashef is a magnificently warm and likeable doctor and writer; and he has the best imaginable bedside manner.

Samer Nashef qualified as a doctor at the University of Bristol in 1980. He is a consultant cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, and a world-leading expert on risk and quality in surgical care. He is the creator of EuroSCORE, which calculates the predicted risk of death from heart operations and is the most successful risk model in medicine, used worldwide and credited with saving tens of thousands of lives. The author of more than 200 publications, his research has been widely cited and he has been invited to lecture in more than 30 countries. As clinical tutor at the University of Cambridge, he is also a dedicated teacher and public communicator, having appeared in NHS Direct videos, at the Wellcome Foundation and in Channel 4's 'The Operation'. He is also a regular compiler of cryptic crosswords for The Guardian and Financial Times under a pseudonym.