cardiac surgery

September 14, 2020

Former Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery leader Bender mourned

Harvey W. Bender, MD, professor of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery, Emeritus, died Sept. 12. He was 86.

By Wayne Wood
Sourav Panja, PhD, underwent a complicated procedure at VUMC to treat his relatively rare form of pulmonary hypertension.
September 10, 2020

Technique helped treat patient’s rare pulmonary disorder

Sourav Panja, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was working in his lab one evening last year when he began coughing up blood. Even breathing was becoming difficult.

By Matt Batcheldor
Members of the heart transplant perfusion and recovery team pose with the TransMedics system used to preserve organs during transport. From left are Ashish Shah, MD, Harry Moneypenny, CCP, LCP, Matthew Warhoover, MS, CCP, LCP, Jordan Hoffman, MD, Kyle Rider, CCP, Joey Lepore, RN, CCP, LCP, and Marina Mailyan, MS, CCP, LCP.
August 26, 2020

Four heart transplants performed in whirlwind 48 hours

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center’s cardiac surgeons transplanted four hearts in one 48-hour stretch in August, thanks to VUMC’s perfusion and organ recovery teams traveling more than 4,000 miles across the country to obtain the donor organs.

By Matt Batcheldor
May 6, 2020

Ventricular assist device program hits major milestone

VHVI’s cardiac surgery and heart failure teams recently celebrated a milestone — implanting the 500th adult patient with a ventricular assist device.

By Matt Batcheldor
April 20, 2020

Damage, disruption, delirium

New findings suggest that treatments that decrease oxidative damage might help with postoperative delirium that occurs in up to 30% of cardiac surgery patients.

By Paul Govern
VUMC’s ECMO program has expanded to areas outside of the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit.
March 12, 2020

ECMO team to help other providers create their own programs

VUMC has signed an agreement with Ballad Health, a regional health system serving East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, to train its team to provide a life-saving medical program called ECMO.

By Matt Batcheldor
February 28, 2020

VUMC uses novel transplant technique to revive donor hearts that had stopped beating

In the first such procedures in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has successfully used technology to bring two donor hearts that stopped beating back to life before transplanting them into patients.
By Matt Batcheldor
January 16, 2020

VUMC tops in nation for number of heart transplants performed last year

Vanderbilt University Medical Center tied for first place as the busiest heart transplant program by volume in the United States in 2019.
By Matt Batcheldor
September 12, 2019

ECMO program expanding to more intensive care units

VUMC is expanding its ECMO program from its longtime home in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) to the Medical (MICU) and Trauma Intensive Care units.
By Matt Batcheldor
May 2, 2019

More congenital heart patients becoming transplant candidates

Patients with a form of congenital heart disease — having only one ventricle (pumping chamber) — are now living longer lives due to the successful surgical and medical treatments they receive as children.
By Matt Batcheldor
March 28, 2019

First artificial heart patient gets permanent replacement

Tim Lowell of Hernando, Mississippi, received the first total artificial heart in the state of Tennessee when the cardiac surgery team at Vanderbilt Health placed the device in his chest on Sept. 26, 2018. The mechanical heart kept him alive for nearly three months until a matching human donor heart became available and he was transplanted on Dec. 16, 2018, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
By Matt Batcheldor
October 25, 2018

Bacchetta to help expand pulmonary surgery program

Matthew Bacchetta, MD, MBA, MA, has joined the Department of Thoracic Surgery as an associate professor and the surgical director of a new respiratory institute at Vanderbilt University Medical Center that will be launched soon.
By Matt Batcheldor
August 2, 2018

New surgery for heart pump implants helps reduce hospital stays

Artel Thorpe Sr. of Jackson, Tennessee, recently became the first person in the United States to undergo a new, less invasive surgical technique for implanting a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) heart pump since it was granted Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval on July 11.
By Tom Wilemon
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