{"id":41678,"date":"2014-02-13T16:10:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T21:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=41678"},"modified":"2014-02-13T16:10:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-13T21:10:51","slug":"roman-desanctis-one-of-the-greats-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2014\/02\/13\/roman-desanctis-one-of-the-greats-retires\/","title":{"rendered":"Roman DeSanctis, One of the Greats, Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"

CardioExchange Editor-in-Chief Harlan Krumholz interviews Roman DeSanctis, one of the most influential physicians of his career, upon his retirement.<\/em><\/p>\n

Krumholz:<\/strong><\/em> I met Roman DeSanctis when I was a third year medical student. I have always said that he and Kanu Chatterjee are the reasons that I am in cardiology. They shared this towering clinical ability with great respect for the clinical history and physical examination \u2013 and an intense interest in the patient.<\/p>\n

When I heard that Roman was retiring I thought of what it must have been like in 1951 when Joe DiMaggio retired. Roman was like DiMaggio in that he had talent and charisma \u2013 and people were drawn to him. And with patients it was magic \u2013 he connected with them \u2013 and they trusted him. It was something to see.<\/p>\n

It is a loss for cardiology \u2013 I think that there will not be cardiologists in quite the same mold. I wanted to pull him into CardioExchange to have the chance to connect with him again. I wanted him to know that he would continue to be an inspiration to me. I wanted to thank him.<\/p>\n

For our readers I posed the following questions to him:<\/p>\n

Over all the years, what is your favorite memory of your career in cardiology?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

DeSanctis:<\/em> <\/strong>Clinically, there have been just too many memories to pick out a single one.\u00a0 The 18 years that I was involved as a cardiologist to the king of Morocco was a uniquely wonderful and interesting period of time. King Hassan II was a brilliant, sensitive man, and very important to the United States as a major, behind-the-scenes player in the Middle East; I was very fond of him. However, I\u2019ve probably experienced my greatest satisfaction in helping to train scores of brilliant young men and women who have gone on to become leaders in cardiology, medicine, and health policy.<\/p>\n

You have seen remarkable changes in cardiology over your career. We can do so much more now. Is there anything we lost in the progress?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

DeSanctis:<\/em><\/strong> In 60 years we have gained so much in our ability to\u00a0 treat people with heart disease;\u00a0 but the advent of technology, IT, medicine that is driven heavily by financial considerations, and many other external forces have greatly diminished the personal, human aspects of taking care of patients.<\/p>\n

What is your advice to the next generation?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

DeSanctis:<\/em> <\/strong>Remember that we are so fortunate to be in medicine; we go to work every day with no other purpose than to relieve pain and suffering and try to heal the sick. Is there a higher calling? Despite all of the external forces that make it harder for us to enjoy this noblesse oblige, we must never forget that the beauty and the essence of medicine is still the interaction between ourselves and the patients we serve. Doctors should never underestimate their importance to their patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harlan Krumholz interviews Roman DeSanctis, one of the most influential physicians of his career, upon his retirement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":904,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1714],"class_list":["post-41678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-mentoring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/904"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}