The Thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon
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Thorac Cardiovasc Surg · Jun 1988
Case ReportsPerformance characteristics of a disposable ventricle assist device.
A disposable ventricle assist device (VAD) including atrium, ventricle and trileaflet valves (all polyurethane) can be driven either a) by its original self adjusting drive unit (ABIOMED BVS 5000) or b) by a standard intra-aortic balloon pump console (DATASCOPE). Maximum flow in vitro was 4.3 l/min with the original drive console versus 9.2 l/min for activation with the intra-aortic balloon pump console. Performance characteristics of the VAD were evaluated in 11 bovine experiments. ⋯ We conclude that VAD is extremely simple to use. Activation by an intra-aortic balloon pump console enables significant increase of VAD-output without detectable increase of blood trauma. Successful weaning of VAD activated with standard intra-aortic balloon pump console was possible in a first clinical application.
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Thorac Cardiovasc Surg · Jun 1988
Case ReportsSpontaneous closure of a traumatic interventricular septal defect following a penetrating chest injury.
A case of spontaneous closure of a traumatic ventricular septal defect following a penetrating cardiac injury is presented. The surgical management of these lesions is discussed.
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In 1986 development, testing and improvement of a multi-center based quality assurance procedure has been started by the German Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery supplied by a research fund of the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology. Initially five cardiac surgery units took part in defining quality related items, collecting associated data and establishing a common data base. ⋯ Preoperative clinical state, intraoperative actions and postoperative results including unexpected events sum up to an average record length of 300 items per procedure. Evaluation and representation of quality related data ist done in two ways: an overall quality profile consisting of 17 so called quality indicators accompanied by six patient-mix indicators enables each cardiac surgeon to get a quick global reference within the multicentrical data context, and several problem oriented profiles assist building and testing of special quality-related hypotheses towards improvement of procedure standards and performance.