Memoir Details Global Shift Toward Tech-Driven Surgery

A new memoir by Sherman A. Katz, MD, FACS, examines how medicine’s shift toward less invasive techniques, imaging, robotics, and standardized protocols is reshaping surgical practice. The book traces the move from a craft rooted in open surgeries and personal judgment to one dominated by technology, regulations, systems, and corporate interests, while arguing this is not a critique of progress but a call to preserve essential values. It foregrounds themes of compassion, accountability, humility, mentoring, rivalry, and the emotional toll of caring for critically ill patients, highlighting how surgeon identities and doctor-patient relationships have evolved. The author uses decades of experience—including work in operating rooms, hospitals, medical schools, private practices, academia, and a prison clinic—to reflect on what medical progress gains and which enduring professional ideals remain worth safeguarding. The memoir is pitched as a resource for healthcare professionals, students, patients, and historians to understand a transforming industry and to consider what should be preserved amid rapid change. Katz notes the balancing of innovation with the human connection at the heart of medical care as surgery becomes increasingly technologized.