I put stents in for a living, and I still think every cardiologist should read this book. Steve Kaplan didn't reject the cath lab, he did the work most patients never do: he separated anatomy from physiology, chased down the functional data, and walked into every consult prepared enough to change the conversation. The real story here isn't one man's decision to decline a procedure; it's a repeatable process showing what AI, advanced imaging, and an engaged clinician can accomplish together that none of them can alone. Stents save lives in the right patient. This book is about doing the work to find out whether you're that patient before anyone opens the tray.

This is a very valuable, impressively well-researched book. Steve Kaplan takes readers through a genuine deep dive into the pathophysiology of coronary disease and the therapies now available to treat it, material that is both credible and remarkably understandable for a lay audience. I've spent much of my career in cardiovascular medicine thinking about the ethics of intervention, not just whether a device or procedure can help, but what is best for true long-term benefit. Steve applies that same rigor and discipline to his own medical journey. It's a rare and valuable thing: a patient who did the ethical reasoning most of us wish every physician would embrace, and every patient could do.

The future of cardiovascular care has always depended on the marriage of engineering and medicine, better tools, better data, better decisions. This book applies that same principle to the patient's side of the table, showing what happens when a person combines rigorous data, imaging, and AI-assisted reasoning to genuinely understand his own disease. A thoughtful case for where the democratization of data, knowledge and intelligence for personalized decision process is here today.

I had the pleasure of reading Steve's cardiovascular journey and he is living proof of my mantra: with medical issues one has to be their own advocate. Steve did his incredible homework on imaging and cardiometabolic risk factors which ultimately led him to better understand his vascular condition and then make sane therapeutic decisions.

The first half of this book should be required reading for cardiology fellows. It captures the herd mentality I see so often in practice, what I'd call the 'oculostenotic' reflex, and the distinction between anatomy and physiology that gets lost in it. The second half speaks directly to patients navigating that same terrain.

This thoughtful and engaging book highlights one of the defining challenges of modern medicine: transforming complex scientific evidence into informed, patient-centered decisions. Steve Kaplan's journey demonstrates how curiosity, critical thinking, and responsible use of artificial intelligence can enrich, not replace, the physician-patient relationship. An important contribution to the conversation on shared decision-making in cardiovascular care.

Steve Kaplan has written a deeply personal and unusually rigorous account of navigating complex coronary disease. Through conflicting expert opinions, advanced imaging, coronary physiology, and the responsible use of AI, he asks the question at the heart of interventional cardiology: not simply whether a lesion can be treated, but whether treating it will truly benefit the patient. This is not an argument against intervention, but a compelling case for better questions, better evidence, and better decisions made together.

AI cannot be dismissed. It's used across all sectors of life, and in medicine, it's used by patients and doctors alike. This is neither good nor bad, but it instead highlights the need to use critical thinking to sift through what AI outputs tell you. In both spheres of my life, as a practicing cardiologist and as a health-tech founder, I witness AI used in place of critical thinking. Steve's journey, catalogued in this book, provides a framework for how to use AI in life and in medicine. Steve provides a rare example of 'doing your own research' and doing it well, with AI as the initial guide to understand the jargon of a foreign world. When the jargon was mastered, he took over as the guide, showcasing what's possible when data, imaging, and genuine curiosity are pointed at your own health. Ultimately, he proved that not every nail needs a hammer and saved himself from unnecessary procedures.

Most of cardiology happens downstream of decisions patients never fully understood. Steve Kaplan refused to stay downstream, he used AI to make sense of his own heart data, arriving at our conversations informed, evidence-minded, and ready to ask the questions that matter. This is what it looks like when a patient becomes a real partner in his own care. More patients like him would change how it is practiced.

The lesson here travels well beyond the coronaries. In vascular surgery the decision rests on symptoms and perfusion, not on the severity of a picture, and that is precisely the distinction Kaplan spent two years learning to make. Patients who read this will ask better questions, and the physicians across from them will practice better medicine for it.

The best medical decisions are not simply made for patients, they are made with them. Steve Kaplan's story is a powerful example of what can happen when an informed patient understands his disease, weighs the alternatives, and takes an active role in choosing his path forward. Faced with severe coronary artery disease and an apparently straightforward recommendation for stenting, he chose instead to pursue aggressive lifestyle modification with extraordinary commitment. The Stents I Didn't Get is an important reminder that shared decision-making is not about rejecting medical advice; it is about ensuring that even the seemingly obvious decision reflects the evidence, the alternatives, and the values of the person whose life will be affected.

Every research career teaches one enduring truth: even the most significant statistic rarely tells the complete story. Steve Kaplan learned this firsthand as a patient, not as a scientist, and had the perseverance to keep asking questions well after most would have stopped. This book offers an inside view of that persistence.

Sobering, yet inspiring. Bold, but not reckless. Provocative without being hyperbolic, The Stents I Didn't Get chronicles one man's n=1 quest to rise above the Number 1 killer of people across the globe. And although AI helped Kaplan navigate the murky maze of mainstream medicine, it certainly could not write the story that only he was meant to tell.

Expertise in medicine has always been siloed and hard to scale, and even when patients find it, understanding the tradeoffs behind their own care remains difficult to access. Steve Kaplan's book is a compelling window into what changes when, either through force of will or AI, that access barrier comes down. He doesn't look for a single answer; he builds a map, testing and integrating evidence across disciplines in a way that our current healthcare system has struggled to do. It's a genuinely useful model for what patient-centered healthcare could start to look like.

Periodontal disease isn't just a problem with the gums; it's a chronic inflammatory disease, and there's a well-documented association between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease. That doesn't mean one directly causes the other, but significant infection and inflammation in the mouth shouldn't be overlooked when thinking about a patient's overall cardiovascular risk. Steve's case was a good example of that principle in practice: rather than pursuing an aggressive and costly course of treatment, we identified the specific problem, treated what actually needed treatment, and kept things simple and predictable. His book does a real service putting that kind of everyday clinical reasoning into a larger conversation about evidence-based, patient-centered care.

I remember speaking to a cardiologist still in undergrad, but with medical school aspirations. He told me to stay away from cardiology as there had not been any meaningful technological advance in the last 20 years and he didn't see that changing soon. Since that time, though, we've moved to a wholly new stratosphere with the advent of TAVR, leadless pacemakers, consumer wearables, remote monitoring, and predictive AI. The pendulum has swung hard. And we, both physician and patient, have to make sense of it all. Steve's exercise here in root cause analysis speaks to the complexity of medicine today. Perhaps it also speaks to a future where access and treatment with the help of AI are far more equitable.

Sports science has learned to be cautious about tools that promise more precision than they can yet deliver. Steve Kaplan brings that same disciplined caution to his own cardiovascular care, using AI to sharpen clinical questions rather than replace human judgment. It is a rare and instructive example of what responsible, evidence-aware AI use in personal health can actually look like.

What makes Steve Kaplan's story compelling is the way he approaches a complex health challenge with curiosity, critical thinking, and a willingness to engage deeply with evidence. His account illustrates how data and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, may help individuals better understand their health and formulate informed questions for discussion with qualified healthcare professionals. The Stents I Didn't Get is a thought-provoking personal narrative about informed engagement, evidence, and the evolving relationship between patients, technology, and healthcare. It is ultimately one patient's experience, not a prescription for any particular medical decision or treatment strategy.

Steve's story is a powerful reminder that real progress in cardiovascular health rarely comes from a single intervention, it comes from a patient willing to pursue every avenue, ask hard questions, and put in the work. Renew Health was honored to be part of that journey.

The social media health landscape is overloaded with anecdotes, little context, even less nuance, and too much bias toward whatever 'worked' for someone. In The Stents I Didn't Get, Steve Kaplan does the opposite. The journey he shares is exactly the kind of thoughtful, nuanced, and comprehensive perspective that makes health information genuinely useful. I recommend this book to anyone navigating their own cardiovascular health challenges.