Cardiac Cowboys: The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery

Behind The Knife: The Surgery Podcast

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Education, Science

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before 1952, open heart surgery was considered science fiction. The heart was off limits to surgeons despite more than half a million Americans dying annually from heart disease. Doing nothing was the strategy. However, the status quo would soon change thanks to a few brave and imaginative surgeons who dared to break the most rigid of medical taboos: Do not touch the human heart. We sat down with Dr. Gerald Imber, author of the new book “Cardiac Cowboys: The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery” to discuss how five men raced to invent an entirely new field of surgery.

Guests:
Jessica Millar, MD- General Surgery Resident- University of Michigan; Education Fellow- Behind the Knife
Nick Teman, MD- Associate Professor of Cardiac Surgery and Critical Care- University of Virginia
Gerald Imber- Assistant Clinical Professor of Plastic surgery at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center, Attending Surgeon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and Director of a private clinic in New York City, NY; Author of “Wendell Black, MD”, “Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted”, and “Cardiac Cowboys: The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery”.

Want to hear more from Dr. Imber- be sure to check out his podcast series, Cardiac Cowboys, based on Dr. Imber’s book. You can listen to an introduction of the Cardiac Cowboys series here: https://shorturl.at/rKLM8

Please visit https://behindtheknife.org to access other high-yield surgical education podcasts, videos and more.

If you liked this episode, check out more recent episodes: https://app.behindtheknife.org/listen

Transcript

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0:00.0	Behind the surgery podcast relevant and engaging content designed to help you dominate the day.
0:13.0	Welcome back to Behind the Knife. My name is Jessica Malar, General Surgery
0:25.3	resident, and one of the Behind the Knife Surgery
0:27.2	Education fellows. And I'm Nick Teeman, a cardiac surgeon at the University of
0:31.2	Virginia. Now you're probably used to hearing us talk about the intricacies of cardiac surgery
0:35.6	as the cardiac surgery subspecial team here for Behind the Knife.
0:38.6	But today we have a special episode focused on the history and some of the biggest names who helped pioneer the field of cardiac surgery.
0:45.0	To help us do this, we have a very special guest, Dr. Gerald Imber.
0:49.0	Dr. Imber is a plastic surgeon based out of New York City,
0:52.0	but he's also established himself as a prolific
0:54.4	medical writer having published several books including Wendell Black MD and Genius on the Edge, the
0:59.6	bizarre double life of Dr. William Stewart Halstead. His latest book, Cardiac Cowboys,
1:04.7	The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery, explores the time setting and challenges faced by
1:09.2	five of the biggest names in cardiac surgery. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Imber. Thank you so much for joining us today Dr.
1:13.4	Amber. Thank you so much for having me. So I'll go ahead and get us
1:17.2	started and I kind of am really just interested how you got into writing and
1:21.0	specifically how you got into writing about surgical history. Can you tell us a little bit more about
1:25.3	that? Sure. Getting into writing was accidental. I always kind of liked it but never
1:31.6	considered a profession and I trained at the New York
1:34.8	Hospital Cornell Medical Center and two chiefs before I was there in
1:39.6	general surgery in plastic surgery but two chiefs before in general surgery was a man named
1:44.8	George Hoyer who was the prize resident of William Stewart Falstead and
	...

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