Open Heart

April 28, 2003
Neugeboren, a 60-year-old writer (Imagining Robert), had assumed that he was in great physical shape without risk factors for heart disease. When he experienced shortness of breath and pain between his shoulder blades, these symptoms did not alarm his personal physician. However, after several lengthy cross-country telephone conversations with Rich, a Brooklyn high school friend and cardiologist living in California, it became clear that Neugeboren had a serious coronary disease and Rich insisted that he be hospitalized immediately. With the help of three other high school buddies, Jerry, Arthur and Phil, all prominent physicians, Rich guided Neugeboren through the process of bypass surgery, performed in the nick of time. In addition to his successful operation, Neugeboren credits the support and love he received from these four men with saving his life. This well-crafted and expressive memoir recounts the extensive conversations Neugeboren held separately with his physician friends after he recovered. Deeply committed and working in different fields of medicine, these doctors describe the frustrations inherent in managed care that cause them to rely so heavily on technology and testing rather than spending time listening to and learning from their patients. In the end, Neugeboren, convinced that the patient will provide the diagnosis if the doctor listens, presents a thoughtful rumination on the art of diagnosis and healing.

July 1, 2003
Neugeboren (Transforming Madness; Imagining Robert) was an apparently healthy 60-year-old who swam a mile a day and regularly played basketball. When he went in for a routine checkup in 1999, the doctor ordered an angiography. To the author's shock, the results revealed that he had probably suffered a heart attack and that his four blocked arteries required emergency bypass surgery. The following day, Neugeboren underwent a quintuple bypass. This memoir of his diagnosis and recovery includes lengthy excerpts from his journals; describes the help and support of four lifelong friends, all of whom are doctors; and examines the practice of medicine, ending with an eloquent plea to doctors to see patients as individuals and not just as conditions or diseases. In addition, there are reflections from his friends on their lives as physicians. Neugeboren discovers that, while medicine can control symptoms and disease progression, much is still unknown about underlying causes. Recommended for larger consumer health collections.-Jodith Janes, Cleveland Clinic Foundation Lib.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2003
At 60, Neugeboren swam a mile a day, had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels, was within five pounds of his high-school graduation weight, and felt fine. What's more, he had no family history of heart disease. Thus he was puzzled when a longtime friend, a physician, suggested he ask his personal physician to give him an electrocardiogram. To everyone's surprise, the test revealed that Neugeboren had such serious arterial blockages that he required immediate quadruple bypass surgery. His heart, they said, was living on fumes (of oxygen). He had the surgery, recovered just fine, and wrote a splendid book that describes the scientific miracle of open-heart surgery and uses the term " open heart" also to suggest to medical professionals that they treat their patients as friends rather than sets of biological systems with symptoms. Neugeboren builds a well-documented case in support of the personal touch in the practice of medicine, and he insists that, left to the mercy of what he calls the American medical marketplace mentality, he wouldn't be alive today. Perforce the book pays homage to Neugeboren's good friends in the medical community and others like them, who share Neugeboren's philosophical position that the secret of patient care is caring for the patient.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)