Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery - Hardcover

Musemeche, Catherine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611684420 ISBN 13: 9781611684421

Publisher: Dartmouth College Press, 2014

Synopsis

As a pediatric surgeon, Catherine Musemeche operates on the smallest of human beings, manipulates organs the size of walnuts, and uses sutures as thin as hairs to resolve matters of life or death. Working in the small space of a premature infant’s chest or abdomen allows no margin for error. It is a world rife with emotion and risk. Small takes readers inside this rarefied world of pediatric medicine, where children and newborns undergo surgery to resolve congenital defects or correct the damages caused by accidents and disease. It is an incredibly high-stakes endeavor, nerve-wracking and fascinating. Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery is a gripping story about a still little-known frontier. In writing about patients and their families, Musemeche recounts the history of the developing field of pediatric surgery―so like adult medicine in many ways, but at the same time utterly different. This is a field guide to the state of the art and science of operating on the smallest human beings, the hurts and maladies that afflict them, and the changing nature of medicine in America today, told by an exceptionally gifted surgeon and writer.

About this title

About the Author

CATHERINE MUSEMECHE, MD is a board-certified pediatric surgeon, and a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Her essay “Wake-Up Call” was included in the anthology At the End of Life, and excerpted on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.” She lives in Austin, Texas.

Review

“Pediatric surgeons have long been unappreciated, but Small reveals in vivid, intimate detail the intensity and the excruciating focus that is required to do their painstaking work.” (Lee Gutkind, author of One Children’s Place: Inside a Children’s Hospital)

“Small is huge. I read every word and found it to be  wonderfully written by a surgeon who knows how to bring drama and sensitivity to the difficult situations all surgeons encounter every day.” (John G. Raffensperger,  Emeritus Prof of Surgery, Northwestern Univ, Feinberg School of Medicine and author of Children's Surgery, A Worldwide History)

Edition details

• Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1611684420
• ISBN 13: 9781611684421
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244