IT IS a privilege which cannot be taken lightly to address this society as its president. The responsibility for choice of subject, and the content of the presentation, is for this paper alone on our program not shared with the Program Committee. At the outset, therefore, I absolve the Program Committee of responsibility. I would, perhaps, have been better advised to have gathered together material dealing with some technical aspect of the field of cardiovascular surgery, and speak from experience that could have gone back as far as 18 to 20 years. However, a broader topic has been selected for its current importance.
My interest in clinical research in this field of surgery is directed toward the question of how to select patients in the difficult categories on the basis of a reliable prediction of the results of the surgery. I am also interested in the influence on these results