October Meeting at JSUMC

Dennis Broschart - Manager of Volunteer Services at Jersey Shore and (with Lou Massarelli) Past Acting Co-President of our chapter - introduced Ed Diamond, now Senior Manager of Cardiac Services, previously for many years the manager of the cardiac cath lab. Ed was the first (and only) speaker of what we planned as a panel discussion on the topic “The OR of the Future is Here.”

Ed described the “hybrid operating room” that some of us had seen when we toured the new building. This is a big two-zone, thousand-square-foot room. One zone, for angioplasty and stenting, has a bi-plane X-ray unit with two cameras, taking pictures from top and side simultaneously, so they don’t have to move. About fifteen feet away in the other zone is an operating table. If something turns up during stenting that requires open surgery, the patient can be moved right over to the operating table. Jersey Shore is probably the only hospital in the state that has this kind of two-zone room.

Blockages in the left main artery are the worst place to have a heart attack. Formerly these cases required bypass surgery, because if anything went wrong in stenting the whole heart would fail. Now, with immediate surgical backup available, they can put in a stent. The room is also used for electrophysiology (to locate and treat arrhythmias) and for ICDs and pacemakers.

Planning for the hybrid room started about three or four years ago with cardiac surgeons, cardiologists, neurologists, radiologists and orthopedic surgeons, collectively deciding what they needed. The room was planned primarily for neurosurgeons to build up a stroke center at Jersey Shore. A neurosurgeon can locate a stroke and stent it, put in grafts, embolize an aneurysm, using the X-ray unit and catheters, but if a vessel has to be opened up the patient can be moved to the other side of the room.

This is a collaborative procedure. The X-ray department provides staff for imaging, and the cardiac cath staff provides technical support for the surgeon, the cardiologist or the neurologist.

Chapter President Bill Ryan added his comments about the new Emergency Department. This was the same story he told in the President’s Message on page 1, so it won’t be repeated here.

We had hoped that Dr. Felix Garcia, a trauma surgeon, could join us in the panel discussion we had planned, but a medical emergency delayed him until after the meeting ended. We met him in the corridor and he promised to try to join us at our meeting in February.