Having Courage to Act

Having the COURAGE to include PCI in shared decision-making for stable angina.

I nvented by Andreas Grüntzig in 1977, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has revolutionized the management of coronary artery disease.1 Initially, PCI was more attractive than conventional revascularization with coronary artery bypass grafting because it was less invasive, but as time went on PCI acquired its own evidence base of improved clinical outcomes. In fact, for ST-elevation myoc...

Courage Unmasked

Lying supine, the technician uses my mask to bolt me to the treatment table. After he leaves the room, I feel alone, and at first, afraid. I see and hear the radiation machine move around me, but feel nothing. Minutes later, the door opens, and the mask is unbolted. This process is repeated almost daily for 2 months... After 2 weeks, the skin on my neck and inside my mouth becomes red, sore, an...

High-risk surgery: the courage to fail.

Not so long ago, cardiothoracic surgeons were often called to see patients late in the natural history of their disease and asked to consider higher-risk operations. Most surgeons of an earlier era, when routine cases often carried a greater than 5% mortality, were willing to do this. The growth of intense institutional and public scrutiny of 30-day mortality has brought this era to an end. Thi...

Hardiness: The courage to grow from stresses

The recent emphasis on positive psychology is welcome, and has spurred much relevant research. But, there are still many unresolved conceptual and research issues, as more variables are being proposed as relevant. As part of this process, the present paper proposes hardiness as an addition to positive psychology. Hardiness is a combination of attitudes that provides the courage and motivation t...

Do you have the courage to change?