Diagnosis of myocardial ischemia in man. Concluding remarks: the "stunned" cardiologist.

According to Sherrington, the integrative skill of the nervous system allows the organism to react to the environment 'as a whole' and not 'as a mere collection of organs'. Similarly, the cardiologist--both in research and in patient care--cannot consider the heart 'as a mere collection of techniques'. In general, any new techniques leads to better understanding of disease, and at the same time to better understanding of the value and limitations of the methods in use. The ability to integrate different technical information in sound clinical reasoning, the ability to talk, understand and convey confidence to the patient as a human, will further increase in importance with the growth of technology. The alternative is that cardiologists will disappear, to be replaced by a bunch of 'stunned' subspecialists.