The Remarkable Developments of Heart and Chest Surgery in the 20th Century

The author is a board-certified thoracic and heart surgeon who studied and learned the craft of thoracic surgery under one of the great pioneers in the development of heart surgery. The rapid multiplication of heart and lung operations as well as the diagnostic tools and the mechanical, electrical, and chemical means to support life during surgery is a story that needs to be told. It is not an uncomplicated story but one that is easy to appreciate particularly if you are one of those who benefited and thousands did. The table of contents gives some idea of the impressive extent of the blossoming of thoracic surgery particularly in the last fifty years of the twentieth century.

The author is Armand A. Lefemine, MD, from Harvard Medical School (1952). His internship was at US Public Health hospital, and his surgical residency at VA Hospital, in Boston. This was followed by his fellowship with Dwight Harken, MD, in cardiac and thoracic surgery and his appointments at Harvard Medical School and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Then he had his private practice of thoracic and cardiac surgery in Hartford, Connecticut, and St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He was faculty of Tufts Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was chief of surgery at VA Hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee and a professor of surgery at ETSU Medical School. He was chairman of the department of surgery at ETSU medical school, in Johnson City, Tennessee, and director of surgery for the Veterans Administration in Washington, DC.