The era of the Heart Doctor

Excerpt

When I started cardiac surgery training in the early 1960s, we had to deal with the whole gamut of thoracic, cardiac, and vascular surgery from congenital heart disease to congenital tracheo-esophageal fistula. We had to do all types of thoracic surgery like lung cancer, hiatus hernia, esophageal cancers and strictures, and portal hypertension. The entire vascular surgery domain from the carotid to the most distal tibial disease was under our control. We also had to participate in kidney transplant and major surgeries. In other words, all major surgeries were under our domain. We also had to do angiography, i.e., translumbar, coronary, and arch studies. If we got time from all this, we had to put in permanent pacemakers at night. At that time, the heart surgeon was “king” and most of the chairmen of surgery in the US medical schools were cardiovascular surgeons. Gradually, we seceded territory, one after the other, till in the 1980s when we were doing only valve surgery and coronary bypass surgery. We were so busy doing coronary surgery that we forgot that there is a world outside coronary revascularization. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most of our younger cardiac surgeons became a one operation surgeon, i.e., coronary bypass. …