You Can Be Anything › All careers › Healthcare & Medicine
Perfusionist
Operates the heart-lung machine during open-heart surgery — literally keeping patients alive.
Did you know?
Perfusionists control a machine that does the work of both your heart and lungs simultaneously during surgery
How subjects help
- Biology: Keep blood flowing and full of oxygen while the patient's own heart is stopped.
- Chemistry: Balance salts, sugar and anti clotting medicine in the blood during surgery.
- Physics: Control pump speed, pressure and temperature to cool and rewarm a patient's body.
- Engineering: Set up, check and fix problems with the heart and lung machine before each operation.
A famous name
John Heysham Gibbon: Invented the heart-lung machine that perfusionists run; first used successfully in surgery in 1953.
Try it yourself: Count your breaths before and after exercise
- Sit still for a minute, then count how many times your chest rises in 30 seconds. Double it to get breaths per minute.
- Do star jumps at a steady pace for one minute. (Skip this if you have asthma or a heart condition, unless an adult says it is fine.)
- Straight away, count your chest rises for 30 seconds again and double it.
- Count once more after resting for three minutes, and draw a bar chart of your three results.
Respiratory therapists and anaesthetists watch breathing rate closely, because it is one of the first signs that a patient needs help.
Adapted from Oak National Academy: The effects of exercise on breathing and heart rate.
Also try: Design something easier to hold.
Known for it in
USA, Germany, Australia, Canada, UK