Westaby’s memoir of his career as a surgeon is told operation by heart-stopping operation. The stopping of the heart is quite literal in many instances, a necessary part of the procedure to mend it, and you may come to feel a certain blunting of the initial thrill as the surgeon’s saw carves through another sternum and another pericardium is snipped open to reveal its ailing contents.

Professor Westaby is at pains to show empathy for each patient and to give insights into each life devastated by heart disease, but his true focus is the bag of muscle and tubing in their chest. This book makes a compelling case for better funding of alternatives to heart transplants; it also requires its readers to have a strong stomach for the slippery stuff of veins, bone marrow and blood, so much blood.

Westaby is an old-fashioned hero-doctor, gruff but compassionate, personally ambitious in the name of saving lives. His book is a notably down-to-earth instance of the genre, but ultimately it’s impossible not to admire this seemingly nerveless miracle-worker.

• Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table is published by HarperCollins. To order a copy for £7.64 (RRP £8.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.