by Syed Tasnim Raza When I was a young attending surgeon on the faculty in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, one of the things I got frequently called for was management of malignant pleural or pericardial effusions. Once a patient develops malignant pleural or pericardial effusion the median survival is only two months, so I…
by Syed Tasnim Raza Syed Tasnim Raza & Richard Harry Adler It was late October 1971. My brother-in-law, Dr. Tariq Khan and I were interviewing together for residency training positions in Surgery. We finished our interview at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn at 7:30 PM one night and then drove to Syracuse in heavy…
by Syed Tasnim Raza Denton Arthur Cooley, founder and president and at the time of his death president-emeritus of the Texas Heart Institute (THI), died on Friday November 18, 2016. He had celebrated his 96th birthday only three months earlier. Texas Heart Institute, founded in 1962, became a premier heart surgery center in the world,…
by Syed Tasnim Raza This is a response to the article “A Cardiac Conundrum” by Alice Park in the March-April 2013 issue of Harvard Magazine. The article mostly discusses a new book: Broken Hearts: The Tangled History of Cardiac Care by David S. Jones, which I have not read, so the following comments are only…
by Syed Tasnim Raza Michael E. DeBakey died on July 11, 2008 of natural causes, just two months short of his 100th birthday. He was a pioneering, innovative, and world-renowned cardiovascular surgeon, whose surgical career spanned close to 70 years. While his name is most associated with Methodist Hospital of the Baylor College of Medicine…