Transplant: A Heart Surgeon's Account of the Life-And-Death Dramas of the New Medicine

Focusing on one year at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Heart and Heart-Lung Transplant Program (which he directs), Frist, also an acknowledged authority on artificial heart implants, celebrates the last five years' dramatic increase in number and quality of transplant cases, caused in part by cyclosporine, a new immunosuppressant used to prevent rejection of transplanted organs. This dramatic, instructive, highly personal account dwells on the long-term surgeon-patient relationship and on the emotional aspects of these still-costly procedures involving the families of de ceased donors. Concerned by the pain and often long waits suffered by prospective organ recipients, Frist consantly seeks to enlist the cooperation of medical professionals, the media and others in locating and cajoling potential organ donors. Author tour. (July)