How are patients kept alive between the time the damaged heart is removed and when it is replaced with a healthier one?
In: 8
The aorta is the biggest arterial vessel pumping out of the heart and the vena cava is the biggest vessel into the heart and they’re both cannulated and blood is drained into a reservoir from the vena cava that is pumped through an oxygenator which exchanges gas like your lungs do, which gets pumped to the aorta and out to the body. Basically we bypass the heart and lungs so that the body gets gas exchange which keeps it alive until the native body can exchange gas and blood flow on its own.
Edit: I’m a perfusionist. I run the pump that exchanges gas while the native heart and lungs can’t. It’s a very specialized field. Only a few thousand people in America do it.
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