Perfusionists Get Creative

Perfusionists Mike McAdams and Amy Patel operate the heart-lung machine during surgery.

Performing open heart surgery comes with its challenges. One of the greatest challenges came when the heater-cooler, a machine that controls the patient’s temperature during surgery, broke.

Perfusionists Mike McAdams and Amy Patel collaborated with Mike Gilfeather, a lead perfusionist back home at BWH, to come up with a solution. “His ideas, combined with ours, led us to the creation of a homemade heater-cooler,” McAdams said.

The solution works perfectly and ensures patients are safe as the team awaits delivery of a new heater-cooler from Kenya later today.