Word: atrium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...attached to the end of a catheter inside a catheter, which was inserted into a large vein in Suzette Marie's right thigh and worked through a pathway of veins into the heart (see diagram). The doctors then pushed the capsule and outer catheter first into the right atrium and finally into the left atrium, extended the first umbrella and pulled it back against the edges of the opening. Then they drew the catheters back through the hole into the right atrium, opened the second umbrella, locked it to the first and sealed off the hole. Suzette Marie...
...patient is still hooked up to the heart-lung machine, which takes over the function of these organs during open-heart surgery. First Litwak and his team insert two cannulae, or tubes, of flexible silicone into the patient's open chest. One tube is stitched into his left atrium, to draw off blood before it reaches the ventricle (see diagram). The second tube is connected to the aorta, to return pumped blood to general circulation. The tubes are then led down through the surgical incision in the chest and placed under the skin of the upper abdomen...
When the tune comes to take the patient off the conventional heart-lung machine and close his incision, the ends of the tubes are connected to a simple roller pump. The pump draws oxygenated blood from the left atrium and injects it forcibly into the aorta. The first time the system was used, the pump was doing 65% of the heart's work three hours after the operation. By the fifth hour, the heart had recovered sufficiently to perform 50% of its normal function. By the twelfth hour, the heart was carrying 78%, and by the 42nd hour...
...nothing but a bag of fibrous tissue." Barnard cut away 45% of this diseased heart muscle, partly to make room for the implant. He placed the donor heart piggyback on Taylor's own, left side to left side, and cut silver-dollar-size holes in the left atrium (upper chamber) of each. Then he stitched the two hearts together and shunted the aorta from the donor heart into Taylor's aorta...
...rationale was clear: oxygenated blood from the lungs would flow naturally into the patient's left atrium, and some from there to his repaired left ventricle for. pumping to the rest of his body. Some would also flow into the donor heart's left atrium and its left ventricle, where the child's young, muscular pumping chamber would give the patient's heart a boost. No artificial pacemakers were used, so the two hearts kept beating at their own rates; the child donor's, without connections to the nervous system, pulsed faster than the patient...