Cookeville Regional will purchase a new heart-lung bypass machine.
The machine is often used primarily for open-heart surgeries and will cost CRMC an estimated $428,000. CRMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Bruce D. Wayne Johnson said the machine serves as a heart during procedures and is a critical piece to a successful open-heart surgery.
“This bypasses the heart and lungs,” Johnson said. “It cleans and oxygenates, takes out the carbon dioxide, and reoxygenates the blood, takes it away from the body, and then puts it under pressure back into the body, bypassing the heart.”
Johnson said CRMC performs an estimated 300 open-heart surgeries a year. Johnson said the new machine will replace other aging machines on hand.
“Two are from 2014, and anyway, they are old, and we need to start replacing them, can’t get parts for some of them, so as they break we are gonna have to wheel them out to the dock.”
Though the machine is newer, Johson said the new machine will not necessarily change outcomes but will improve reliability and efficiency.
“The small improvements that they make are in the footprint in the operating room, the efficiency of the motors but the basic work that the heart lung machine, the ones that we have now, they work just as well as this one will,” Johnson said.
Johnson said Cookeville Regional will actually need to replace another machine to have as a backup. Johnson said that though a backup is hardly ever needed, it is good practice to have one available.