The Healing Blade: A Tale of Neurosurgery [Paperback]

Edward J. Sylvester (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 1997

The Healing Blade is a true story. The narrative spans a period of years as the author spends hundreds of days and nights following the neurosurgeons and residents at one of the world's leading neurological institutes as they struggle to save lives, to compete in an ever more difficult medical world, and to learn the innermost secrets of the brain.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a splendid, often riveting account of high-tech procedures and personalities at the forefront of modern brain surgery, Sylvester ( Target: Cancer ) takes readers into the famed Barrow Neurological Institute at Phoenix, Ariz. There a staff of elite surgeons, led by director Robert Spetzler and equipped with the latest image-scanning machines and measuring techniques, pushes the frontiers of neurosurgery. The author's precise prose and apt imagery bare the interaction between staff members and patients linked by this exact and problematic surgery, illuminating the NASA-like preparation and teamwork involved in such procedures as hypothermic arrest, when the patient's blood is first chilled and then drained from his body for up to an hour. Focussing on Spetzler and the demands of his work, Sylvester offers an immediate, thorough and lucid chronicle.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Sylvester, journalist and author of Target: Cancer ( LJ 1/86), adds to the burgeoning popular literature on the brain. He shifts comfortably among several foci (the human brain, the patient, technology, the surgeon), creating a gripping portrait of modern surgery. (David Noonan in his Neuro , LJ 3/1/89) was less effective at managing these multiple topics.) At the center of this portrait stands Robert Spetzler, the talented world-famous head of neurosurgery at Phoenix's Barrow Neurological Institute. Spetzler is especially renowned for his finesse in handling "standstills" in which the patient's temperature is drastically lowered, the heart brought to a standstill, and surgery completed. Despite a rough, occasionally careless style, Sylvester knows how to maintain an effective rhythm and tell a good story. From a literary standpoint, Mark Shelton's Working in a Very Small Place ( LJ 6/1/89) and Steve Fishman's A Bomb in the Brain ( LJ 11/1/88) should be primary selections. But where interest remains high, The Healing Blade would make an appropriate third choice for public libraries.
- Laurie Bartolini, Lincoln Lib., Springfield, Ill.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Beck Press, Inc.; Updated edition (November 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966097203
• ISBN-13: 978-0966097207
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #996,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward J. Sylvester is a science journalist and the author of three books on cutting-edge medical research, as well as the highly acclaimed The Gene Age, in which he and Lynn Klotz introduced lay audiences to the emerging biotechnology revolution in 1983, adding a revised edition in 1987. It was nominated by publisher Charles Scribner Jr. for the Pulitzer Prize. Sylvester's previous books include Back From The Brink (Dana Press 2004) and The Healing Blade: A Tale of Neurosurgery (Simon & Schuster 1993; Beck Press 1998). These narratives follow the lives of physicians and patients at leading neuroscience centers such as Johns Hopkins Neurological Critical Care Unit and Barrow Neurological Institute. He is a professor of journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University, where he teaches science writing. Ed and wife Ginny live nearby in Tempe.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning exploration of neurosurgery, January 15, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Sterling, Mass.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Healing Blade: A Tale of Neurosurgery (Paperback)

Ed Sylvester has brought neurosurgery as close and approachable as my easy chair. He has managed, with a mixture of lyrical prose and white-knuckled suspense, to take us into the operating room, even down into the recesses of the brain where doctors are accomplishing medical miracles every day. Most importantly, Sylvester masterfully clarifies and explains surgical and medical principles that had, until now, been murky. For example, his few paragraphs on the cause of stroke made clear to me the malady that has claimed members of my own family, but whose fundamental causes were mired in wive's tales.

Not only does the reader follow the surgeon's tools beneath the surface of the brain, but Sylvester draws us into the competitive and demanding world of the neurosurgeon. From the earliest days of this surgical specialty, the men (women are only now beginning to get a toe-hold in the profession, Sylvester tells us) who have populated neurosurgery have been colorful, fierce competitors, seeking academic standing and popular notoriety in what is probably the most demanding field of medicine.

Ed Sylvester is a master of explanatory writing. But he also brings us so close to his characters and the life-or-death risks they face under the brain surgeon's knife that "The Healing Blade" reads like a thriller. Not a book to read in bed before retiring; it had my heart pounding and I more than once found that it was the wee morning hours before I could put it down.

A highly recommended read.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The chilled brain, August 7, 2002

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Healing Blade: A Tale of Neurosurgery (Paperback)

Siamese twins occur only once in 100,000 births. Those joined at the head, like the Guatemalan twins recently separated at UCLA are the rarest of all, occurring in less than one in a million births. UCLA, which has one of the world's leading neurosurgery centers is not the first operating theatre where a successful attempt was made to separate "craniopagus" twins who shared some of their neurological "wetware." That honor belongs to Vienna's university hospital and a team headed by pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Wolfgang Koos and American neurosurgeon, Dr. Robert Spetzler.

Step by step, "The Healing Blade" describes the operation performed on the conjoined twins. The surgeons had been rehearsing each step, "together and apart, through three months" to acquire the necessary precision of movement. The operation itself took place over a period of days. Sylvester describes the scene before it began:

"At the juncture of the twin operating tables lies what appears to be a log of ironwood, dried pale and clean. It is the long, common skull of the twins, shaved of that fringe of curly brown hair. Nearly a foot apart two small [three-year-old] faces appear carved into the wood, one facing straight out, one cast slightly downward, both in slumber, perfect cherubim carved into the column of their skull."

Read this fascinating account if you are at all interested in the fate of the Guatemalan twins at UCLA. Unfortunately, the twins who were separated in Vienna later died of infection, so this is a cautionary tale. We must not become too optimistic, even though the surgery was successful:

"In 30 attempts worldwide to separate twins joined at the head, from 1928 to 2000, only seven of the 60 children came through the surgery without brain damage; 30 died, 17 were neurologically impaired and the remainder of the cases were reported before the ultimate outcome could be determined, according to the medical journals [NY Times 08/07/2002]."

Other operations performed by Dr. Spetzler had more successful, long term outcomes as described in "The Healing Blade." This book focuses on three main subjects: Dr. Spetzler and his contributions to neurosurgery; the history of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, where Dr. Spetzler performs the majority of his operations; and a new state of the art procedure called the "Standstill," which is a nickname for hypothermic arrest. In a sense, the patient dies for an hour--no blood and therefore no oxygen can reach his brain while he is chilled down to the point where his heart stops.

This book is much more unputdownable than the latest techno-thriller by, say Clancy or Ludlum, because it is true. The author's attention to detail places us right into the operating room with the surgical team, and deep into the magical cavern of the human skull. The only dry stretches of text concern the founding and history of the Barrow Neurological Institute, and they don't take up too much room. The author also works in a brief history of neurosurgery, but none of it is quite as fascinating as the scenes where Dr. Spetzler is poised over his intraoperative microscope, carefully dissecting an aneurysm that threatens to explode through the micro-currents of a human intelligence.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Overview, November 14, 2004

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J. Brian Watkins (Laie, Hawaii) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Healing Blade: A Tale of Neurosurgery (Paperback)

This work grabs you immediately with its description of the "standstill" procedure. A patient is placed into a coma, the blood and body chilled and then the heart actually stopped while the surgeon skillfully digs around in the grey matter. Fascinating stuff.

The author is a journalist obviously awed by Dr. Spetzler and all that he (and others) have accomplished at the Barrow Institute in Phoenix--the book is primarily a story of Dr. Spetzler's career and secondarily the developing science of neurosurgery. The reader is treated to descriptions of the daily life of residents--rounds, M&M conferences, surgical procedures, etc. There are the obligatory descriptions of the hideously expensive gadgetry and imaging technology that has made modern neurosurgery possible. But something was missing.

In attempting to simultaneously cover the entire field of neurosurgery (as well as a curious diversion into the history of Phoenix) this book lost some of its punch. This could easily have been an incredibly interesting biography of Dr. Spetzler (and if anyone writes one--I'm buying it), or a surgical techno-thriller about standstill procedures curing otherwise hopeless cases . Better yet, a treatise on the cost/benefit tradeoffs presented by modern medicine with its increasing dependence upon pricey machines. Not to mention the peculiar danger of saving a patient from a horrible aneurysm only to find that his or her personality is irrevocably changed--and not for the better. Unfortunately, the work was somewhat diluted by its lack of focus. Nevertheless, highly recommended.