Click HERE for the entire Series… Wednesday 8.0 We’re not “The Borg”… but we’re gettin’ there … The Borg are a collection of species that have been turned into cybernetic organisms functioning as drones of the Collective, or the hive. A pseudo-race, dwelling in the Star Trek universe, the Borg force other species into their […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… The Swine Flu: Day 1: In the middle of the dessert, sandwiched in the flat lands of West Texas, lies a small town that sits upon a giant aquifer. From the birds eye it is configured like a scrabble board of lights and streets perpendicular like a compass pointing […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Monday 6.0 It Starts Here … Deconstructing the anatomy of an open heart team is like reading the writing on a wall from some war memorial somewhere, remembering a lot of somebody’s, that were in a lot of battles somewhere, fighting for a lot of something. Nothing stands out. […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… 24 Hours… of ECMO Past Midnight… Ghost Stories & What-Not 3:00 am Ghost stories So it’s 3 a.m. and the STS paper work has become a mountainous blur, our ECMO patient is on “cruise control”, the hive activity is down to almost nothing, and there is an empty room […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Saturday 4.0 The Aftermath The inevitable, as myocardial tissue that had been used to buttress the repair, itself became ischemic, necrosed and died. With it went the repair, and with that, the dam that had helped this man survive- failed and was now beyond the point of fixing. We […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Friday 3.2 Getting it Together You know how we all have our personal perfusion comfort zones? Cell saver in one spot, heater cooler with drug box on it, a nook for your clip board, drugs loaded a certain way? It’s a way for us to condition ourselves in times […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Friday 3.1 Not Quite Primed Some days in this field are a little gray. Or is that grey? not sure really, but as we have been told, perfusion is 99% boredom and 1% terror, or sheer tragedy… Well there is another part to that 1%- and it’s not terror, […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Friday 3.0 Yahoos, Cowboys, & Heart Surgeons … It isn’t that you really go from one place to another. It is more likely that the second your heart screeches to a sudden splat at 2:37 in the morning, the result of a storm you had no idea was brewing […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… 24 Hours… of ECMO Wednesday 1.3 Getting Past Midnight : ACT’s & Clots … 11:00 pm Somehow during the initial debriefing from the previous ECMO coordinator that I had taken over for, the question of reliability regarding our ACT (Activated Clotting Time) came to the forefront. What was […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… 24 Hours… of ECMO Wednesday 1.1 @ 9:00 pm Well it’s about that time. The PICU is closed for business, onlookers, rubber-neckers, and pretty much any visitors not directly related to your patient, are ushered away- and the staff is settled in for the long haul. Typical “nesting” behavior… […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Ms. Weng Puno-Baldeo, a perfusionist in the Philippines. Going to a battle unarmed, clueless and unprepared- Yes that’s me. I entered the world of perfusion by chance. Last 2011, I was offered a training in perfusion at the Philippine Heart Center while […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… 24 Hours… of ECMO Getting Started … 24 hours to the finish line, and all you can do is just hope you don’t trip and fall. That pretty much sums up this ECMO run. Just trust your feet, and don’t lose sight of the goal… If you are in […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Day 1 Just one of those days. Nothing scary on the horizon- and our desert world is getting watered 🙂 Loaded for Bear Torrential ? Maybe not- but you never know when there will be some blood loss to be dealt with … One of those AAA cases with […]
Click HERE for the entire Series… Editor’s Note: I am planning on publishing a book regarding heart surgery in America- and all of the nuances that implies. I invite you to contribute your comments or essays on how you feel about the process currently in place @ your institution. This book will be raw in […]