<p>Professor Stephen Westaby is a former heart surgeon and writer. During his career he performed over 11,000 operations and pioneered the use of life long artificial hearts as an alternative to donor transplants.</p><p>Stephen was born in Scunthorpe in 1948 and went to medical school at Charing Cross Hospital in 1966. The following year he suffered a serious head injury during a rugby match which had a major impact on his personality. He changed from being a shy person lacking in confidence into a fearless, ambitious operator – qualities, he believes, made him entirely suited to being a surgeon. </p><p>In 1981 he took up a Research Fellowship in Alabama with John Kirklin, the first surgeon to successfully perform a series of open-heart operations using a heart-lung machine. During his time there Stephen discovered that medical nylon caused some patients to die of post-perfusion syndrome. Following his discovery, the manufacturers of the equipment removed it from the circuit which led to a substantial drop in cardiac surgical mortality.</p><p>In 2000 he implanted a revolutionary new heart pump into a man who was terminally ill with heart failure using a device called the Jarvik 2000. Temporary devices – known as bridge to transplant devices – had been used to stabilise patients while they waited for a donor heart but this surgery – transplanting a permanent artificial heart instead of a donor heart was the first of its kind.</p><p>Stephen retired from the NHS in 2016. The following year he published Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Theatre which won the BMA President’s Award.</p><p>Stephen has two children and lives with his wife in Oxfordshire.</p><p>DISC ONE: Wonderful Land - The Shadows DISC TWO: Viva La Vida - Coldplay DISC THREE: Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty DISC FOUR: America - Simon &amp; Garfunkel DISC FIVE: Forever Autumn - Justin Hayward DISC SIX: Moonlight Shadow - Mike Oldfield DISC SEVEN: Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac DISC EIGHT: Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: Var. 18. Andante cantabile Performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano) and London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn</p><p>BOOK CHOICE: Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus by William Harvey LUXURY ITEM: A family photograph CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Forever Autumn - Justin Hayward </p><p>Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley</p>