BMJ 1998;316:1685-1686 ( 6 June )

Editorials

Lessons from the Bristol case

More openness---on risks and on individual surgeons' performance

News p 1691
Papers pp 1697, 1701, 1705
Education and debate pp 1734, 1736, 1740
Personal view p 1756
Medicine and the media p 1757

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Cardiac surgery has changed within living memory from desperate attempts to achieve miracles for a few to the present situation where there is high expectation of a good result for tens of thousands of patients each year. It is easy to recall the surgeons who performed the first heart operations, who used cardiopulmonary bypass while it was still in its infancy, or who started transplantation---all undertaken with a high initial mortality. They worked on doggedly, in the face of doubt, scepticism, and often widely publicised criticism. They are now remembered with respect as having had "the courage to fail." Many others, equally determined, did fail and are not remembered.1

Some of that determination, in the face of possible failure, is necessary in every surgeon. But the congenital heart surgery undertaken in Bristol in the past 10 years---the subject of the General Medical Council's most recent, and arguably most important, . . . [Full text of this article]
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