A World Renowned Heart Surgeon, is a (Private) Master Magician
A Magical Pyhsician and his Bag of Tricks
Dr. Randall Wolf Works His Magic, not only on his patients but ON “Some” patients. A world renowned heart surgeon that is a master magician and the powers to be, run in the family, but he’s very quiet and private about it and not everyone knows at his place of employment.
Raised on a farm in Indiana, there was the headquarters for the United States Playing Card Company about 10 miles from where he lived. He comes by his passion as two of his uncles also performed. Wolf found one of the uncles bag of tricks in his father’s attic at around age 10 but left the bag alone, although he was interested and fascinated.
Dr. Wolf is currently a member of the DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center at Houstom Methodist Hospital in the Texas medical Center. He serves the arrhythmia specialist of the group, atrial fibrillation being one of them.
Treatment of Atrial Fibrillation Called Wolf Mini-Maze
Dr. Wolf specializes in Atrial Fibrillation which is estimated to affect up to 4% of the population characterized be a rapid, irregular heartbeat, A-Fib is largely due to abnormal electrical impulses that cause the atria of the heart to quiver instead of beating steadily.
In the treatment called the Mini-Maze, the surgeon makes small marks on the heart while it is still beating. It’s a procedure that requires a very steady hand and has saved thousands of lives, this is what Dr. Wolf is best known for, he’s actually very quiet about being a magician, not many know this about him.
A moment in his office to an unsuspected observer, he says, ” Hold this in your hand,” Placing a miniature Rubik’s cube in his visitor’s palm. Dr. Wolf muses about the pretty colors for a distracting second, then slaps the cube. An explosion of colored M&M’s fill the astonished visitor’s hand. The cube is gone. “You can eat them,” he says with a grin, “they’re real”. (by Houstonia)
The Parallels Between Wolf’s Two Pursuits
Master Magician and Physician Renowned for Atrial Fibrillation Pocedure
In the 60’s, Wolf had to learn patience, acquiring new tricks slowly as you would have to send away for a trick, it would take 6 weeks to arrive back then, checking the mail everyday. The younger generation wouldn’t know the urgency of waiting 6 weeks for a letter.
The parallels between his two pursuits both require precise hand-eye coordination, “in magic I’ve got to be so good I can fool myself” he says, “surgery is no different”.
Then there are the hours and hours of practicing the two diciplines. Wolf explains, “every step has to be memorized in order, if you make one mistake, you’re done”. He spends at least 5 months on a new trick before he performs it for his audience, mostly private events.
As reported by Houstonia, While the surgeon isn’t shy, most of his colleagues at Methodist, where he started at the end of 2018 after a three-year stint at Memorial Hermann, are unaware of his hidden talent. After he was persuaded to perform some tricks at a party, they were awestruck. As he says, smiling, “they had no idea, it’s better if they don’t know”.
Wolf’s a friend of David Copperfield, perhaps the world’s most famous illusionist who once tried to buy a rare vintage trick from Wolf called the prediction box. Wolf agreed to rent it to Copperfield for 6 months in exchange for a letter saying he’s used it, and tickets to any show Wolf wanted to see. Copperfield ended up keeping it for 2 years, (I’m sure he didn’t mind).
Conclusion
As an Atrial Fibrillation patient myself, I ran across a rather large comment about Dr. Randall Wolf in a heart disease group I’m in. The individual (having Atrial Fibrillation) recently went to Texas to have Dr. Wolf perform their ablation surgery on them this year (2022). They mentioned him being a magician and that he uses instruments that he helped design making them smaller for the procedure.
Dr. Wolf developed this new minimally invasive procedure without making a seven inch incision in the sternum or breastbone and without having to use the heart-lung machine.
The Mini-Maze procedure is a much less invasive procedure, in which he enters the chest through small incisions between the patient’s ribs.
Mini-Maze has been widely successful, from the beginning, the promise was clear, Now, Dr. Wolf has patients he sees every year, and he’s studies some of them for weeks to make sure they do not have A-Fib.
A decade after the procedure, they still don’t. They don’t take medication, they don’t need secondary procedures and they don’t live with constant stroke risk.
Beware, It’s a live video of the procedure and graphic details in the operating room.
You Tube Video of the Wolf Mini Maze procedure.
Dr. Randall Wolf is a surgical innovator since 2000, has been a pioneer in the minimally invasive surgical treatment of Atrial Fibrillation. He has performed over two thousand Mini-Maze procedures since the first one in 2003 and has demonstrated the procedure to over 800 heart surgeons worldwide.
This gives such great hope for all that suffer with A-Fib, below is more contact information.
Randall Kevin Wolf M.D. 6550 Fannin st Ste. 1401, Houston, Texas 77030***Phone#- 713-441-5220
Thank you for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this article and if you need ablation, try him first…and I’d like to thank the person that gave their story to our heart support group.
Wishing you well,
