Perfusion.com Cardiovascular News Roundup: November 10, 2022

Relevant reading, listening or viewing – curated by the creator of Tiny Perfusion Letter, Luc Puis

Every week, we collect 10 or 20 articles from the peer-reviewed literature that we think will be of interest to the perfusionist community. Feel free to comment on the findings or suggest entries for the newsletter by emailing the Editor – Luc Puis.

Another RoundUp for our trustworthy readers, roughly divided into two topics: outcomes and ECLS.

Outcomes

Sometimes, you have to change the culture in an institution. Radically. That’s what this article about quality and safety in cardiac surgery is all about. This is a REALLY good read and contains many changes to the conduct and attitude toward perfusion. A must-read!

The next article from Australia investigates whether cardiac rehabilitation can further improve the mental and physical quality of life seen to improve following cardiac surgery. Spoiler alert: it does.

Predicting outcomes is hard. Predicting cost and outcomes of CABG surgery is even harder. That’s why we sometimes need help from machine learning techniques that can do this harder, better, faster, and stronger. Just like in the song.

Imagine this: it’s 5 PM, and your center wants to start a procedure on an 80-year-old. That must be bad for the outcome, right? Well, you can’t use that argument anymore. At least not according to this research investigating the influence of circadian rhythm on postoperative outcomes in major elective and urgent interventions.

Are you getting cardiac surgery? Better be vaccinated against COVID-19. That is the message from this brief communication regarding cardiac surgery outcomes following COVID-19 infection in unvaccinated patients. Conclusion: you’re worse off unvaccinated.

Remember that first article? About changing the culture? Well, one tool that you can use is virtual reality training to improve patient safety culture. This is the description of the protocol, but we’re looking forward to the results they get.

ECLS

Over to ECLS: simulation is a powerful tool in training healthcare specialists. This publication describes the use of a mock circuit to test extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.

When you’re a perfusionist these days you should be paid fairly well. That’s also what administrators think. And so, they are exploring the role of nurse ECMO specialists to help maintain programs sustainably.

COVID-19 ARDS comes in many forms, and so do the treatments. Sometimes, all the patient needs is a little CO₂ removal. That can be accomplished by extracorporeal carbon dioxide removal during renal replacement therapy to allow lung-protective ventilation. The results are in: it works!

And last but not least, a description of a technique to cannulate with a dual-lumen cannula for ECMO using a mobile x-ray device.

Enjoy the read!