Understanding Heart Disease
ARTHUR SELZER
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1992 The Regents of the University of California
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Preface of Understanding Heart Disease.
This volume is the outgrowth of my book The Heart: Its Function in Health and Disease , originally published in 1966. In the nearly twenty-five years since that book first appeared, there has been extraordinary progress in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, along with a growth of public interest in and awareness of heart disease, which remains the number-one cause of death and disability despite a significant decline in the past few decades. In response to this high interest, the news media cover medical advances in the field of heart disease extensively. Exaggerated and premature reports of newer aspects of treatment frequently lead to misunderstanding and unreasonable expectations.
Along with the introduction of new technologies in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, there has been a growth in the number of hospitals and clinics providing specialized care for cardiac patients that is generally considered excessive. Furthermore, the question of whether too many complex diagnostic tests and operations are being performed on patients with heart disease has been raised and widely discussed in the news media and has aroused the interest of Congress. Among the reasons for this alleged overuse is the demand by the often poorly informed public for the "newest."
These considerations influenced me to shift the emphasis in this new book. Rather than update the previous volume, which discussed the normal and abnormal heart in simple terms, I decided to present the problems facing today's cardiologist, explaining the technologies and the decision-making process but avoiding direct advice to a cardiac patient—in other words, emphasizing the "why" rather than the "how" of prevention and treatment of heart disease. I hope that a better-informed reader in need of medical care will be able to cooperate more successfully with the physician.
To keep the book within the framework of these objectives, I eliminated certain subjects or discussed them only briefly. Among those are epidemiological data related to heart disease, such as statistics regarding the incidence, the age and sex, and the racial and geographical distribution of various types of heart disease. Similarly, I have omitted detailed presentations of treatment, including specific recommendations regarding drug and dietary management of heart disease, in favor of concise statements of principles.
Click here to enter the Free Online Course of Understanding Heart Disease by ARTHUR SELZER.
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