Division of Cardiology
Section of Thoracic Surgery,
University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Mich
The end of this millennium will be remembered for many things.
Chief among them will be that this was the era of the consumer, whose
needs helped to ignite and continue to fuel an explosive information
age. Slogans such as "An educated consumer is our best customer"
epitomize the paradigm shift from gullery to tutelage in
contemporary marketing, although some may view the latter as simply a
more sophisticated form of mendacity. In part, the new strategy is a
response to advances in communication technology coupled with the
compulsions of discerning consumers. Parallel transitions have occurred
in medicine, now known as the healthcare industry, in which the term
client has become synonymous with patient, the concept of population
served has been replaced by the number of lives covered, and in which a
practice may not survive without an elaborate Web site or home page.
The patient is now the commodity. The buyer's market in medicine has
stimulated efforts at outreach and information transfer at
unprecedented levels.
Medical consumers have become efficient search engines. They can access
the latest medical information on-line, they are intrigued by watching
live operations on the Nova channel, and they are able to read the
results of research studies in the New York Times, often
long before medical journals ever hit our "in" boxes. With all of
this, the demand for a lay reference book on heart disease might be
challenged. In reality, though, the need has never been greater. The
exponential increase in availability of
© 1998 American Heart Association, Inc.
Book Reviews
The New Living Heart
Michael E. DeBakey, MD, Antonio M. Gotto, Jr, MD, DPhil. 495 pp.Holbrook, Mass: Adams Media Corp; 1997. $17.95. ISBN 1-55850-722-1.