Word: open-heart
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...Because open-heart surgery has a massive impact on the system, surgeons routinely keep close watch on the patient's bodily functions during the postoperative period. Now, to hasten recovery, doctors are being urged to study their patients' psyches as well, and for good reason. A Yale University School of Medicine researcher, Dr. Chase Patterson Kimball, has found that open-heart surgery sometimes produces severe psychological reactions...
Serious operations may leave psychological scars. Feelings of rage are common in women who have undergone hysterectomies; depression is understandably frequent among those who lose a breast because of cancer. Open-heart surgery, reports Kimball, produces its own constellation of symptoms: temporary loss of memory and intellectual function, delusions and even life-threatening depression...
Painful Awakening. Kimball bases his findings on observations of more than 200 open-heart patients during the past six years. Of this number, at least 70% suffered some psychological aftereffect. A few became euphoric, assuming, sometimes incorrectly, that the successful surgery had solved all their health problems. Others became withdrawn and depressed, convinced that neither the operation nor the care they were receiving would help. In some cases, there were lapses in the ability to read or speak. One 50-year-old man found himself unable to understand a simple sentence, or count backward from 100. A 57-year...
...months after their operations. Some even develop amnesia where the operation's emotional aftermath is concerned. Most, believes Kimball, could recover faster if they could be spared psychological upsets. His studies have shown that advance screening can identify those patients most likely to react badly to open-heart surgery. A complete description of what the patient can expect when he emerges from anesthesia, something few doctors now bother to give, could ease emotional anguish and make his recovery more rapid...
...Americans over 65. In Houston, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey's surgery team collected $202,959, and Dr. Denton A. Cooley's, $193,124. Here again the fees do not appear exorbitant. In all, 1,050 operations were performed, with 50 or more surgeons taking part. Complicated open-heart techniques, including the implantation of artificial heart valves and pacemakers, were involved. Even so, the average cost to Medicare for each operation was roughly $380-a modest figure. All the money, said DeBakey, went to Baylor College of Medicine, which pays the surgeons' salaries...