Live from the Operating Room

Open-heart surgery as entertainment

While millions of Americans watched Linda Ronstadt rock through Get Closer on last week's Grammy Award show, millions of others were tuned to a distinctly different beat: the gentle, vivid pulsations of a human heart. For the first time ever, major surgery was broadcast live from an operating room. But whether the performance was a credit to medicine or show biz is a matter of some debate.

The star of the show was Cardiologist Edward Diethrich, 47, the deeply tanned, photogenic director of the Arizona Heart Institute in Phoenix. Among his previous credits: performing triple-bypass surgery on Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater last year. Diethrich's co-star and patient was Bernard Schuler, 62, a retired insurance salesman, who spends his winters in an Arizona trailer park. Schuler, a smoker for 41 years, had suffered a mild heart attack in 1977. A continued buildup of fatty deposits in his coronary arteries made him a prime candidate for a more serious second attack. Schuler's physicians recommended coronary bypass surgery, in which a blood vessel, taken from the leg or elsewhere in the body, is used to reroute the heart's blood supply around clogged vessels. More than 110,000 such operations are now done each year.

"I really have no other choice," said Schuler before undergoing the surgery at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. "This is the only way to go if I want to live." It may also have been the only way he could pay for the $20,000 operation. The hospital agreed to take just the $10,000 he would get from insurance and write off the rest. Said Schuler: "I couldn't turn the deal down."

For Diethrich, and many other surgeons, performing on-camera was nothing new. His operations had been videotaped for doctors and nurses for nearly a decade. The cardiologist agreed to a request from KAET-TV in Tempe, Ariz., to do a televised operation as part of a month-long health series on the public station. The two-hour segment, picked up by some 100 public TV stations in 33 states, had "a twofold purpose," said KAET Spokeswoman Kathy Banfield: "To alleviate the fears of those who face this surgery" and "to encourage others to give up smoking and other bad habits so they won't wind up on that table." To help "educate" viewers, Diethrich and two studio commentators gave a running account of the operation.

But why show it live? Said Diethrich: "There is nothing more beautiful than the human heart. It's alive, and I think it's important to see it live." Worried in part that viewers might see it die, two-thirds of the stations carrying the program delayed the broadcast; most were prepared to slip in another show if the operation failed. Diethrich dismissed these fears as merely "hypothetical." The death rate during bypass surgery is 1% to 4%.

There are as yet no formal ethical guidelines on TV surgery, but a number of doctors reacted with personal criticism of Diethrich. "This was strictly a publicity stunt," said Tucson Cardiologist Burt Strug. "It degrades the medical profession to the level of used-car salesmen." Observed Harvard Heart Surgeon John Collins: "Until now the performance of an operation had been viewed as a private matter between surgeon and patient. We're sufficiently depersonalized in our society already without showing someone's operation on television."

Viewer response, though, was overwhelmingly positive, and several stations plan a rebroadcast by popular demand. Said KAET's Banfield: "We consider it a success." Fortunately for Schuler, his doctors do too. All is going well, and he will probably leave the hospital this week. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.