Customer Reviews

A Practical Approach to Catheter Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation (Practical Approach (Lippincott & Wilkins))

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I'm off to the 2009 Boston AF symposium next week. I have been performing ablations for 9 years. I was looking for a book that summarizes where we are in the process in a single tome. Obviously a difficult task in a changing field, but progress has stagnated recently, so it is an appropriate time to start writing textbooks.
This one does reasonably well and is up to date. However, if you are already proficient in ablation for AF it doesn't really offer any new insights and if you are just starting it is probably a little misleading. For instance, in some chapters it still allows some of the less forthcoming practitioners in the field regarding potential of the success to continue their obviously inaccurate exaggeration. This harms the field in general and I think these people need to be audited - the authors know of whom I speak. So if a newer operator quotes from Chapter 10 a 90% success rate from the procedure described (presumably a single procedure - not mentioned), he or she is grossly misleading the patients, as we know from every other study.
Overall, I think the book achieves its goal of summarizing what is known about AF ablation now and where the field is likely headed with only minimal need for grains of salt when reading certain authors.

Read all about his slipshod methods and his arrogant attitude toward patients: Collateral Damage: A Patient, a New Procedure, and the Learning Curve (Volume 1)

Here's Hugh G. Calkins, MD committing malpractice... A defense lawyer said about Collateral Damage:

"I am a medical malpractice defense attorney. I read Mr. Walter's book because I wanted to hear a patient's viewpoint. I defend physicians, and think 90% of the lawsuits are frivolous. There is no guarantee. I took it for granted that patients realized that residents, without much experience, would be performing most of the surgery at our teaching hospitals. Of course, doctors must practice in order to be more skilled, but practice on whom -- your family?

"Mr. Walter brilliantly tells the story of how one of the foremost teaching/research hospitals in the country practiced on his wife without disclosing that they were doing so. I was riveted, and ultimately ashamed of what is an all too common practice. I highly recommend this book. It is a well-written study of one person's experience at the hands of the most exalted research hospital in our country. I wish that all of the physicians at Johns Hopkins would read it, and realize that their patients are not research rats."

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