Open heart : the radical surgeons who revolutionized medicine / David K.C. Cooper.

New York : Kaplan Pub., [2010], ©2010.

xv, 431 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Preface : men who dared to fail -- The long and rugged road : the first 2,500 years -- The first steps forward : boldness and delicacy : Robert Gross and Clarence Crafoord -- Blue babies : the battle to save their lives : Alfred Blalock and Russell Brock -- The seeing finger : opening obstructed valves : Charles Bailey and Dwight Harken -- Six minutes! Hypothermia and the race against time : Wilfred Bigelow, F. John Lewis, and Henry Swan -- Far-fetched ideas : the concept of the heart-lung machine : Clarence Dennis, John Gibbon Jr., Viking Bjork, and Ake Senning -- Innovation and risk : the golden Minneapolis era : C. Walton Lillehei and Richard Varco -- The iceman cometh : establishing the heart-lung machine : John Kirklin -- Bionic men : artificial materials and mechanical valves : Arthur Vorhees, Charles Hufnagel, and Albert Starr -- Life from death : human valve transplants : Donald Ross and Brian Barratt-Boyes -- The floodgates open : surgery for coronary artery disease : Vasilii Kolesov and Rene Favaloro -- The ultimate operation : heart transplantation : Norman Shumway, James Hardy, and Christiaan Barnard -- In the realm of science fiction : mechanical hearts : Willem Kolff, Michael Debakey, Denton Cooley, and William Devries -- The right stuff : those magnificent men and their heart-lung machines.

Includes bibliographical references and index.