Live Blog: Uluru ! 2012 [Saturday Morning]
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:
Saturday Session: Day 3:
Day 3 of the ANZCP Annual Scientific Meeting
(alternatively the morning after the night before)
The dinner last night took place outside on the red sand overlooking Uluru, with the accompaniment of a didgeridoo player and astronomer; this was of course in conjunction with great company and great food- what a remarkable evening.
Any residual `grogginess` remaining from last night quickly disappeared about 5 seconds after the commencement of this mornings session.
The first speaker was Steve Sutton- it is rapidly becoming clear to the perfusion community down under that Steve is the custodian of a phenomenal amount of perfusion history- much of which he honoured us with in this session.
As a perfusionist relatively new to this profession i was both humbled and motivated by the journey Steve took us on from Gibbon to stem cell research. Next up was Thushara Perera presenting preliminary research findings on the potential of NIRS as a monitor of depth of anaesthesia monitoring.
it is probably worth stating that a great deal of the valuable information that commercially available NIRS machines are capable of providing is not currently available from the `front` of the machine. I am referring to the oxy and deoxy haemoglobin values that are utilised to derive the saturation number available on the front of the machine. It is perhaps incumbent on the end user of these devices to lobby the companies to make this data available.
To conclude the morning session we had the return of Clare Elwell back to the stage. Within this presentation Clare showed us the possibilities of NIRS technology, namely functional brain activation studies. The mapping of the brain with this technology could well be the next frontier for adequacy of perfusion monitoring- i for one find this an extremely exiting proposition. Who among us would not like a more detailed picture of what is happening in deep cerebral structures whilst we are manipulating physiology.
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Session 2 of the day was a large submitted free paper session.
Wow- some great work is being done out there. I think i must applaud the way people manage to carry out research and still keep up with a busy clinical workload. During this session we heard about the discolouration of CPB cannulae due to the leaching of phthalates, the negative effects of phthalates and the relatively easy way manufacturers could solve this issue. We were also presented with an interesting case presentation extolling the virtues of the Transmedics organ care system. Other topics of note that were covered were the impact of MUF techniques on haematological parameters, normothermic extracorporeal perfusion for isolated porcine liver, the value of muticentre benchmarking for quality improvement, the importance of infection control measures during CPB, and the use of aspirin for improvement in oxygenator longevity.
Great morning- now for a spot of lunch……..
To go to the next post on Saturday Afternoon CLick Here…