Live Blog: Uluru ! 2012 [Friday]
Uluru is sacred to the Anangu, the Aboriginal people of the area. The area around the formation is home to a plethora of springs, waterholes, rock caves and ancient paintings. Uluru is listed as a World Heritage Site.
Media Journalism by…
Martin Gill: Perfusionist
Editor, ANCZP Gazette
(Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney Australia)
Editor’s Note:
To view the entire Uluru series, Click Here…
This opportunity is provided by the efforts of, Mr. Martin Gill, perfusionist, who is attending this meeting in Australia’s Wild West so to speak..
His previous live conference blog (the 1st here @ ‘Surfers) can be read by clicking here…
Why a Live Blog ?
The intention here @ CircuitSurfers is to offer up a library of these types of objective POV’s (Points of View) to highlight conferences as well as “personalize” what a potential attendee can expect if deciding to participate.
Uluru Conference:
Friday Session: Day 2:
Day 2 of the ANZCP Annual Scientific Meeting.
Well this is the commencement of the more formal component of our meeting. After a welcome speech by the President of our college we moved into the Perfusion Adequacy session and first speaker Steve Sutton. Having been responsible for bringing Steve out here i was particularly looking forward to this presentation. Steve spoke on the assessment of the adequacy of perfusion and inflammatory mediators. This very informative lecture gave an overview of our current understanding of perfusion adequacy, and the direction Steve felt this field should take. Steve highlighted the importance of the relationship between clinicians and the corporate sector in taking the optimisation and monitoring of perfusion adequacy forward in order to improve patient outcomes.
Steve Sutton and Clare Elwell delivering landmark lectures.
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Second up in session 1 was Clare Elwell.
Clare runs the biomedical optics department at University College London. Clare spoke about clinical NIRS measurements of cerebral oxygenation, haemodynamics and metabolism. This was a truly great look at this technology and where it may take us in the future. I believe NIRS is a valuable adjunct to perfusion monitoring and any improvement in the technology, clinical application and clinical interpretation of tis data can only be of benefit. Clare’s talk was followed by Justin Skowno who gave a clinicians overview of the NIRS technology within the cardiac operating room. The case examples given demonstrated the clear value, and at times early warning that NRS can provide- Justin did, however, point to the importance of realising that immature interpretation of an immature technology could be fraught with difficulty- but this situation can only improve with time and experience.
Steve Sutton and Clare Elwell delivering landmark lectures.
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Session 2 began with the world renowned Akif Undar.
Akif gave two talks in this session. The first talk centred on the value of laboratory research preceding clinical application of perfusion technology. Much of this value, according to Akif,was related to the willingness of researchers to look at devices in a more physiological model in comparison to product manufacturers that may not go to this extent. A example of this would be pressure flow curves for CPB cannulae- from manufacturers this data is predominantly derived using water, Akifs published work would show theses curves derived from using human blood. I think we are very lucky to have such researchers with the resources to carry out this work as all too often we have people with the desire and curiosity to carry out such work but often not the time and resources. Akifs second presentation looked at the value of pulsatility for CPB andECMO. Akif believes that this is a very underutilised feature and one that is worthy of consideration for the benefit of the patinet. Pulsatility is also a technology that is now crossing over into the centrifugal ECMO sphere.
Between Akifs talks we also heard from transplant and paediatric cardiac surgeon, Yishay Orr. This presentation addressed the imbalance between waiting lists, organ availability and the technology available to bridge this gap. The general feeling is that this area is certainly ready for growth and development over the coming years as organ availability will not conceivably meet the demand.
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After lunch saw the first submitted abstract session.
This session consisted of 4 high quality presentations, first we heard a comparative study comparing the EPOC point of care blood gas analyzer and a lab based blood gas analyser- the data demonstrated a fairly close correlation between the two across most parameters. Next up was a look at ECMO circuit failures at a single centre, followed by interesting preliminary findings from an ovine ECMO and oxidative stress study. The session concluded with a very interesting look at the reliability of air bubble detectors on CPB machines in comparison to an EDAC microemboli quantifier. It would appear that no correlation exists between the two and therefore the question should be raised that should microemboli data derived from the CPB machine air bubble detector be entered into a bypass record?
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Just abut time for the legendary Sounds of Silence dinner.
See you tomorrow.
Martin.
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