A new memoir penned by former Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) President and vascular surgery leader Frank J. Veith, MD, which touches on a lifetime of service to the specialty and tackles some of its most monumental and controversial moments, was published this week.
The Medical Jungle: A Pioneering Surgeon’s Battle to Revolutionize Vascular Care and Challenge the Medical Mafia covers the breadth of Veith’s career as a vascular surgeon, from his early steps in the military as a member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, through innovative work in lung transplantation and, crucially, limb salvage, during his time at Montefiore Medical Center, in the Bronx of New York City.
Veith, in whose name the maiden Frank J. Veith Lecture will take place at the Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) in June, also recounts his role at the heart of U.S. vascular surgery’s endovascular revolution. He writes about how this coalesced, in the early 1990s, around his participation in the first endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (EVAR) in the country alongside technique trailblazer, the Argentinian vascular surgeon, Juan C. Parodi, MD.
The Medical Jungle also sketches out vascular surgery’s evolution as a separate surgical specialism, from its early roots in cardiac surgery through its status today as a comprehensive provider of vascular care outside of the heart and brain.
Finally, Veith charts the development of the world-renowned VEITHsymposium, an annual global gathering in New York City of vascular specialists that Veith started half a century ago, and outlines his philosophy on mentorship and training future vascular surgeons.
The book also contains an appendix bearing reprints of his presidential addresses as leader of both the SVS (1996) and the Eastern Vascular Society (1994), as well his John Homans Lecture, delivered at VAM in 2016.
