A pioneering cardiac surgeon expertly sews up the heart of surgery, the health of the nation, and the NHS.

The Angina Monologues speeds from the transporting of a donor’s heart up the motorway hard shoulder, to cautionary stories of excessive intervention gone awry in US hospitals, to a traumatic trip to bring advanced cardiac surgery to the Palestinian West Bank. Nashef tells heart-stopping stories of transplants, coronary artery bypasses, aorta repair, and cardiac arrest. He also delivers humane advice about medical realities rarely observed: the futility of obsessing over diet, the necessity of calculating risks, the role of decision making, the resilience of doctor and patient alike, and the threadbare brilliance of the NHS.

Nashef is a magnificently warm and likeable doctor and writer; and he has the best imaginable bedside manner.

As a medical student, Samer Nashef was unofficially blacklisted when he started asking questions about the death rates of more senior surgeons. Since then, he has made his name challenging colleagues to be more open and accurate about the success of the procedures they perform. In The Naked Surgeon, Nashef unclothes his own profession, offering an unprecedented and often controversial view inside the operating theatre. He explains how surgeons can 'game' the system to make their results appear better; why the way a surgeon ties the knot in a single stitch could make a life-or-death difference; and why patients operated on the day before a surgeon goes on holiday are twice as likely to die than those operated on during that surgeon's first day back. Full of eye-opening revelations about the cardiac surgeon's craft, The Naked Surgeon is necessary reading for anybody considering medical intervention now, or in the future.