CODE ARRESTS: A HEART STOPS: A Doctor Reports on the Battle Against the Heart Disease Epidemic

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1974

CODE ARREST or STAT implies the urgency of heart failure and Dr. Fried (Arizona Heart Institute) does all he can to stress the epidemic nature of heart disease which is striking younger and younger people, women as well (a million casualties a year). While of course mentioning the contributing factors (foods, cigarettes, inactivity, etc.), he spends most of this book describing the physiology of the heart; diagnostic equipment (most people know that the EKG is prophetically fallible but there's more here on catheterization, angiography, etc. than in the average book); congenital heart disease (which must be corrected before 40); infections and inflammations and that ""afterthought"" of so many others -- rheumatic heart disease; atherosclerosis as it clogs and impairs the entire system; cardiovascular surgery whether it's the much criticized bypass (both in terms of expense and success) or the maybe-someday transplant; emergency treatment and the use of drugs, vitamins (doubtful too) with the main problem still to be confronted and circumvented -- namely the ""procedural"" processes in the body. There's an occasional personal story but for the most part this is straight, by no means sanguine, medical talk well over the heads of, say, Dr. Steincrohn's readers; for many others Lawrence Lamb's Your Heart and How to Live with It will still be more accessible and practical. This is not to disqualify Dr. Dietrich's book as anything but informative and corrective.

Pub Date: April 1, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Saturday Review Press/Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974

Categories: NONFICTION