This book began as a handbook for cardiac patients. It's now been used by coronary-intensive-care nurses, paramedics, emergency-room personnel, family practitioners, hospitalists, pharamaceutical companies, and others.
It can't be that simple!
One of my medical students blurted that out after I explained bundle-branch block. Yes, I told him, it is. It's a simple phenomenon, easily diagnosed: the only thing complicated about it is the murky, confused language some people use to describe it.
If you can read ordinary, non-technical basic English, you can understood what's in this book. I guarantee it.
Most of the facts about medicine can be stated in clear, easily understood language if the writer will only make the effort to do so.
This is the sixth edition (second edition published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins) of a book that's been in use for about forty years: requests for it have come from as far away as the Republic of Mauritius, so it seems to be filling a large niche. That niche has been created by medical gibberish. For example: On a chart a nurse noted that the patient ÑÐЬambulated, became diaphoretic, and expired. I wrote beneath that the patient in fact walked, sweated, and died.
Mobitz-II heart block is a dangerous abnormality that threatens sudden death and automatically calls for a pacemaker. A shocking number of physicians (and some cardologists) don't know how to diagnose it. If you read Chapter 12, you'll absolutely know how to recognize it and that will put you in the upper one or two percent of the medical world.
This book is revised because in the world of medicine new information comes streaming like Niagara Falls. For example, my colleagues here at the University of Arizona have absolutely revolutionized the treatment of cardiac arrest, and their findings are saving thousands of lives in many parts of the U.S. and abroad. When someone collapses, pulseless, you compress the heart much faster than we used to and you don't start mouth-to-mouth breathing. It turns out that the time wasted in mouth-to-mouth breathing was lethal! Please read about this new revolutionary treatment.
Coronary artery disease can be treated by medical management, angioplasty or bypass surgery. In many patients, angioplasty and bypass surgery only relieve pain they don't prolong life. We now know pretty well which kinds of coronary disease fall into the relieve pain or prolong life categories, and the patient should have this information to help in what may be a life or death decision.
More than ever, care of cardiovascular disease involves a team that starts with the patient and family members and extends to ambulance and emergency-room personnel, coronary-intensive care nurses, interns, residents, and attending physicians. A weak link anywhere can be a disaster.
Ignorance is not bliss it's frequently fatal. Mehr licht! said Goethe, more light! Be informed!
