| Transplantation of organs, tissues, etc. -- History. |
| Transplant surgeons -- United States -- Biography. |
| Mezrich, Joshua D. |
| Medical transplantation |
| Organ transplantation |
| Organ transplants |
| Organs (Anatomy) -- Transplantation |
| Surgical transplantation |
| Tissue transplantation |
| Tissues -- Transplantation |
| Transplant surgery |
| Transplantation surgery |
| Transplants, Organ |
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Summary
Summary
"With When Death Becomes Life, Joshua Mezrich has performed the perfect core biopsy of transplantation--a clear and compelling account of the grueling daily work, the spell-binding history and the unsettling ethical issues that haunt this miraculous lifesaving treatment. Mezrich's compassionate and honest voice, punctuated by a sharp and intelligent wit, render the enormous subject not just palatable but downright engrossing."--Pauline Chen, author of Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality
A gifted surgeon illuminates one of the most profound, awe-inspiring, and deeply affecting achievements of modern day medicine--the movement of organs between bodies--in this exceptional work of death and life that takes its place besides Atul Gawande's Complications, Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies, and Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think.
At the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, transplanting organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he illuminates the extraordinary field of transplantation that enables this kind of miracle to happen every day.
When Death Becomes Life is a thrilling look at how science advances on a grand scale to improve human lives. Mezrich examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the inspiring and heartbreaking stories of his transplant patients. Combining gentle sensitivity with scientific clarity, Mezrich reflects on his calling as a doctor and introduces the modern pioneers who made transplantation a reality--maverick surgeons whose feats of imagination, bold vision, and daring risk taking generated techniques and practices that save millions of lives around the world.
Mezrich takes us inside the operating room and unlocks the wondrous process of transplant surgery, a delicate, intense ballet requiring precise timing, breathtaking skill, and at times, creative improvisation. In illuminating this work, Mezrich touches the essence of existence and what it means to be alive. Most physicians fight death, but in transplantation, doctors take from death. Mezrich shares his gratitude and awe for the privilege of being part of this transformative exchange as the dead give their last breath of life to the living. After all, the donors are his patients, too.
When Death Becomes Life also engages in fascinating ethical and philosophical debates: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? What defines death, and what role did organ transplantation play in that definition? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich's riveting book is a beautiful, poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Mezrich, a University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health surgery professor, delivers an attention-grabbing and candid look at human organ transplantation. Often pulse-quickening, sometimes stomach-churning, and always immersive, Mezrich's descriptions of the complicated, time-sensitive process of transferring livers, kidneys, and other healthy organs from deceased donors to recipients use examples from his own work as a transplant surgeon. Numerous, well-integrated asides on the evolving trial-and-error of organ transplant, from the early days in the late 19th century through advances made during WWII and after, complement his personal stories. In addition to being up-front about the fear of making a mistake during surgery-"It needs to be perfect. Otherwise the patient will pay a huge price, the donor won't have given the gift of life, and you will be woken in the middle of the night by a shrill pager"-Mezrich describes the emotional attachment that can form between donor families and donor recipients. He notes how one patient, having received a heart from a young woman killed in a car accident, celebrates her donor's birthday each year, "almost as if it were her own." Success through perseverance is this book's main theme, and Mezrich does a commendable job sharing his death-to-life experiences in a vital field. (Jan.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An outstanding memoir by a transplant surgeon who combines an autobiography and operating room dramatics with an equally engrossing history of his profession.In his first book, Mezrich (Surgery/Univ. of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health) avoids standard-issue jokes about motorcyclists who don't wear helmets but reminds readers that, except for the occasional live donor, a tragedy usually precedes every transplant. "Someone who had just died had saved the life of someone he had never met," he writes, "and we were the ones that made it happen." The author touches all bases with a masterly hand. He trained as a surgery resident, undergoing the usual mixture of servitude and inspiration. He graduated to a fellowship, during which skill and satisfaction increased with no decrease in the workload. Readers will share the author's exhilaration at the end of a procedure when, for example, the clamps are released, blood flow turns a new kidney pink, and urine flows out before his eyes. At intervals, the author digresses, offering a cogent history of transplants. These sections will enthrall most readers save animal rights proponents, who will recoil at the myriad of animals sacrificed along the way. However, plenty of human recipients also died miserably, except for the rare identical twin, in the decades before doctors realized that they required immunosuppression. About half died during the 1960s and '70s, when surgeons used early versions of anti-rejection drugs. After the first effective immunosuppressant, cyclosporine, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1983, success rates exceeded 90 percent. As a result, transplanting many organs has become routine. Still, recent doctor-authors give equal time to failures, so Mezrich recounts plenty of painful experiences.Medical memoirs have become a significant genre over the past two decades, and this one ranks near the top, in a class that includes arguably the best, Henry Marsh's Do No Harm (2015). Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Skillfully stitching medical memoir to medical history, transplant surgeon Mezrich shares stories of patients and donors, provides profiles of pioneers in the field of organ transplantation, and serves up some self-examination. He's in awe of the anatomic beauty and physiologic brilliance of the organs that are transplanted kidney, liver, heart, lung, and pancreas. He describes what a transplant operation looks like from the surgeon's vantage, marveling every time an implanted kidney pinks up and begins emitting urine or a donated liver starts secreting bile. Mezrich explains the procurement (formerly called harvesting) of organs primarily from recently deceased people but also from healthy living donors. A breakthrough in the survival of transplant patients was the use of immunosuppressant medications (in particular, cyclosporine, FDA-approved in 1983) to prevent rejection of the organ. Mezrich reflects on the toll of waiting for an available organ on patients as well as the emotional burden of his job, complex ethical questions about who receives transplants, and who makes those life-or-death decisions. Organ donors are the real heroes in Mezrich's enlightening transplantation chronicle.--Tony Miksanek Copyright 2019 Booklist
Table of Contents
| Note from the Author | p. ix |
| Milestones in Transplantation | p. xi |
| Part I Out of Body | |
| 1 A Perfect Organ | p. 3 |
| 2 Puzzle People | p. 11 |
| Part II The Making of a Transplant Surgeon | |
| 3 The Simple Beauty of the Kidney | p. 35 |
| 4 Skin Harvest | p. 53 |
| 5 Kidney Beans: Making Kidney Transplant a Reality | p. 67 |
| Part III Expanding the Horizon Beyond the Simplicity of the Kidney | |
| 6 Open Heart: The Invention of Cardiopulmonary Bypass | p. 103 |
| 7 Hearts on Fire: Making Heart Transplant a Reality | p. 130 |
| 8 Sympathy for the Pancreas: Curing Diabetes | p. 163 |
| 9 Prometheus Revisited: Liver Transplants and Thomas Starzl | p. 178 |
| Part IV The Patients | |
| 10 Jason: The Secret Is to Live in the Present | p. 209 |
| 11 Lisa and Herb: Should We Do Liver Transplants for Alcoholics? | p. 222 |
| 12 Nate: The Selection Meeting, or Who Gets an Organ and Why? | p. 239 |
| 13 Michaela: We Are All the Same on the Inside | p. 255 |
| Part V The Donors | |
| 14 As They Lay Dying | p. 271 |
| 15 Healthy Donors: Do No Harm | p. 292 |
| Part VI Today and Beyond | |
| 16 Complications | p. 309 |
| 17 Xenotransplantation: From One Species to Another | p. 322 |
| 18 So, You Want to Be a Transplant Surgeon? | p. 329 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 343 |
| Notes | p. 349 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 357 |
| Index | p. 359 |