Extracorporeal circulation in consecutive open-heart surgery patients. Successful use without repriming.

Abstract

Introduction Open heart surgery, using extracorporeal circulation, requires large numbers of blood donors, and obtaining these donors has been a limiting factor in some programs. One suggestion for alleviating this problem has been to increase the utilization of available donors by operating on 2 consecutive patients utilizing a single, initial blood priming volume in the pump. 1 It is the purpose of this paper to report the successful perfusion of 2 patients with the same pump and priming blood on 3 separate occasions. Report of Cases Case 1. —A 10-year-old, 26 kg. girl with congenital aortic stenosis underwent open correction on January 20, 1960, using extracorporeal circulation. Bypass was utilized for 12 minutes with a perfusion rate of 3,740 cc. Surgical correction was successful. Case 2. —A 9-year-old, 11 kg. girl with congenital aortic stenosis and patent ductus arteriosus was the second patient done on January 20, 1960. One hour