Pumped About Perfusion

The cardiovascular perfusion (CVSP) program here in Glendale held an open house on Wednesday, and there was no way I was missing it. I love open houses as a rule, but this one particularly fascinated me both because, of all the programs here at Midwestern University, I had the least direct exposure to perfusion, and also because heart surgery fascinates me.

Mind you, the thought of having heart surgery gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, but observing it has been a fascinating exercise since I was in junior high school.

The heart as a mechanism is absolutely amazing. Being a tech geek of sorts, I often hear from network administrators who use Unix-based servers about how they can leave them running for months without more than cursory maintenance. Those boasts of reliability pale in comparison to the human cardiovascular system. Get back to me when your server can keep your network alive for the better part of a century, computer boy.

Perfusion is an element of cardiovascular surgery that is at once extraordinary and a touch horrifying. Horrifying - to a layman's eyes, anyway - because it involves stopping the heart and rerouting the blood through a series of machines... but extraordinary, because human science has figured out how to do this without the patient dying.

It is a science that naturally demands a certain, very dedicated type of specialist. Perfusionists are literally at the heart of some of the most intense and delicate surgeries in modern medicine. Looking at their equipment and listening as they described their procedures, I couldn't help but be awestruck both by how far medicine has advanced and how happy I was that the perfusion students with whom I was speaking were so dedicated to their craft.

Like any rational person, I hope I never need to benefit personally from their services, but if the time comes that I do, I feel better knowing and understanding what they do and how they do it.

Those of you who haven't had a chance to look into it, I encourage you to do so. You'll be as fascinated as I was. Cross my heart.