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99 reviews for:
Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon's Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table
Stephen Westaby
4.19 AVERAGE
99 reviews for:
Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon's Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table
Stephen Westaby
4.19 AVERAGE
A fascinating dip into the world of heart surgery and its recipients. Westaby bookends their stories with a glimpse of his own story. It would perhaps have been good to see more of the man as surgeon as well as his feats of surgery. The details of heart surgery are also stark but interesting. Worth reading
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I enjoyed this audiobook but some sections were a bit dense with information and broke the flow of the story in place.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Livro 21 / 80
VIDAS FRÁGEIS
Stephen Westaby
303 páginas
UM LIVRO 5 ESTRELAS
Um livro incrivelmente tocante que nos proporciona uma visão excepcional de como é sentir o coração de alguém nas mãos....
Emocionante e escrito de uma forma que qualquer pessoa possa perceber.
O equilíbrio entre a vida e a morte é delicado, e um cirurgião cardiotorácico caminha na corda bamba entre os dois. Na sala de operações não há tempo para dúvidas...!!!!
Well written book. It reads like a short stories.
Good education as well about heart surgery.
I enjoyed reading this book. Def a holiday kind of read for me.
Good education as well about heart surgery.
I enjoyed reading this book. Def a holiday kind of read for me.
I would give five stars for the work this Dr has done but not quite that for the book. It is fascinating and driven but a little too technical and impersonal in parts. His wives are not mentioned until the final acknowledgements and his children only when he leaves one of their events for a medical crisis. This often happens with such a genius and his life saving skills, intelligence and creativity are not in question. Like a number of recent books about the national health service it is scathing about the number crunching and cuts that have decimated the ability to deliver good treatment.
This was quite interesting. I wanted to read this as i was interested in just knowing a bit more about our NHS and i thought it’d be a really interesting topic. It was great listening to the operations and scenarios. But it was sad to see why he stopped being a surgeon.
I did really enjoy this remarkable memoir wonderfully showing the Grim Reaper forever perching on the surgeon's shoulder. Even more interesting as Westaby worked on my patch, in Oxford.
That said, although the content is amazing, the writing is less so. I found some of the descriptions of the case studies rather patronising, especially "little old lady", back to her "little family" and almost surprise expressed when his surgical nursing team can often second-guess him.
However he saved many, many lives that other clinicians had written-off and also describes, so perfectly, the parlous state of risk averse hospital administration vis a vis cutting edge, untested techniques, which he raises only when other possibilities have been exhausted and he is determined to give his patient every chance of recovery and/or improvement from their condition.
That said, although the content is amazing, the writing is less so. I found some of the descriptions of the case studies rather patronising, especially "little old lady", back to her "little family" and almost surprise expressed when his surgical nursing team can often second-guess him.
However he saved many, many lives that other clinicians had written-off and also describes, so perfectly, the parlous state of risk averse hospital administration vis a vis cutting edge, untested techniques, which he raises only when other possibilities have been exhausted and he is determined to give his patient every chance of recovery and/or improvement from their condition.
A very good insight into the world of heart surgery - although it is very technical with a lot of medical terms!