Preface

Although we are excited to bring you the fourteenth edition of Hurst’s The Heart as the book completes its 50 years since the publication of its first edition (1966), we also mourn the sad passing of the first legendary editor of this book, J. Willis Hurst. We will sorely miss his consistent support and encouragement. Through 13 earlier editions of this first multidisciplinary and comprehensive textbook on cardiovascular disease, The Heart has always represented a cornerstone of current scholarship in the discipline. Cardiologists, internists, and trainees from around the world have relied on its authority, breadth of coverage, and clinical relevance to keep up to date on advances in the field and to help optimize patient care. The fourteenth edition of The Heart continues the standard-setting tradition with numerous new features, chapters, and authors.

The new edition features an enhanced and reader-friendly design, and covers need-to-know clinical advances as well as issues that are becoming increasingly vital to physicians practicing cardiology worldwide. The book is now interactive: it is available online and is committed to providing you with timely updates. The interactive models have been developed by numerous young faculty members from the Mount Sinai, Duke University, and Stanford University Schools of Medicine, who look forward to receiving your feedback. Through the 16 thematic sections of text, the reader will find the most complete overview of cardiovascular topics available, plus a timely new focus on evidence-based medicine, health outcomes, and health care quality. We also welcome Bryony Mearns, the previous Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Cardiology, who has substantially helped us in editing the manuscripts. The two volumes of the book have been extensively rearranged.

For this fourteenth edition of The Heart, we welcome Jagat Narula and Zubin J. Eapen as new editors. Dr. Richard A. Walsh has retired as one of the editors of The Heart after having made enormous contributions to the past editions, and we will miss him. We will also miss the associate editors, Sharon Hunt, Spencer King III, Ira Nash, Eric Prystowsky, Robert Roberts, and Eric Rose. We warmly thank the authors for their extraordinary dedication and commitment to a rigorous time schedule that allowed publication of this edition. We greatly appreciate the steady support and understanding of Maria Fuster, Rhonda Larsen Harrington, Navneet Narula, and Rose John Eapen for the successful completion of the book. The secretarial support of Robinson Santana and Alfred Kemp is greatly appreciated. Finally, we extend our appreciation to James Shanahan and his associates at McGraw-Hill Education, especially Karen Edmonson, for their energetic support and for helping to make the fourteenth edition available promptly all over the world.