Resumen de Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care by David S. Jones (review)
What causes a heart attack, and how best to prevent it? How has our understanding and treatment of heart disease changed over time? Clinician-historian David Jones, the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University, exposes the lack of consensus within the medical community about the cause of heart attacks and the ambiguity surrounding the efficacy and safety of related treatments in the twentieth century. Drawing from archival sources and the medical literature, the author traces the shifting medical theory surrounding coronary artery disease and competing treatments of coronary artery bypass surgery and coronary angioplasty that subsequently arose. Readers will certainly learn much about medical changes in cardiac care; however, Broken Hearts is really about the complexity of medical decision-making. According to Jones, patients and physicians are burdened by too many choices, all fraught with limitations and uncertainty, reflecting our enthusiasm, fear, and hopes in combating disease (pp. 16, 19).
