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Elaine Powley, Roger Higson
Radcliffe, £40, pp 160 ISBN 1 85775 626 6
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The older I get the more in awe I become of the achievements of scientific medicine. I also have personal reasons to be grateful, as my little Gracie had an atrial septal defect (ASD) and only a few years ago she would have been condemned to a life of progressive disability. But, thanks to the incredible skill and care from Dr Frank Casey and his team at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Belfast, she is now as healthy and happy and cheeky as any other 7 year old.
Her ASD was closed by angiography; a simple statement, but just imagine for a moment the number of different advanced technologies employed to make the diagnosis and perform the procedure. Fibre optics, ultrasonics, materials science, and a myriad others-all these disciplines meshed unerringly together, all products of centuries...