American cardiology

Today, more U.S. physicians specialize in cardiology than in any other clinical nonprimary care, nonsurgical discipline. In this book cardiologist and medical historian Bruce Fye offers a comprehensive history of this medical specialty, from its invention in the early twentieth century to its more recent transformation into one of medicine's most significant fields. Fye describes both the discoveries and innovations in cardiology and the socioeconomic forces that led to the professionalization of the field in the United States. He shows how, in the period following World War II, such factors as the prevalence of heart disease, liberal government research funding, technological innovations, and the growing availability of health insurance worked together to shape cardiology into a major academic and clinical discipline. Bringing the story up to the present, he discusses the implications of the federal government's recent determination to reduce the share of the budget spent on health care while encouraging the growth of managed care - decisions that could affect the future of medical specialization in general. American Cardiology looks closely at a variety of enduring issues as well, including the forces behind medical specialization and the territorial disputes that it engenders; the evolution of medical education for cardiologists; the growing understanding of the heart and mechanisms of disease; technological developments in the field; issues of fees and fee providers; and the role of the federal government in endowing graduate medical education and biomedical research.