Gerald Buckberg Quotes

[A]s you look at this scheme of how we learn and grow... we go up and down this pipe. ...[G]rowth is knowledge to analyze, to differentiate, to take things apart. Wisdom is to synthesize, integrate, to bring them together. Wholeness means you have complimentary activity to use them both. You have to do something. Something has to happen, and as a surgeon we are lucky. We have the ability to combine wisdom and knowledge into action.

[W]e... talk about gravity as being pulled down, but Einstein said no, it's a warping of space and time. It's pulling you down into an ellipse. ...[T]he moving down-up of time may be no different than moving up and down of your heart, with ejection and suction.

To unfold the heart, we must separate the aorta from the pulmonary artery... to expose the free wall of the right ventricle. ...[W]e must unfold the helix of the heart ...unroofing ...the from its ventricular attachment to separate the ascending and descending [helix] limbs... by unwrapping the coil. ...[A] longitudinal myocardial band is demonstrated that corresponds directly to an open stretched rope. ...Dr Torrent-Guasp has performed this unfolding or unscrolling while dissecting an intact heart... to define the intact myocardium as a single muscle band that extends between the aorta at its termination to the at its beginning. ...A fascinating study was done by Dr P. P. Lunkenheimer... which can counteract concerns that this... may not be repro-ducible...

[O]ur lab studies on test subjects... implied that while CPR plays a positive role in treating witnessed arrest (when applied quickly once the heart stops beating)... application of CPR in unwitnessed arrest (when there is a delay before its use) is... wrong... because after the brain has been ischemic... CPR will return normal blood to the brain. ...Yet medicine continues endorsing this approach—despite the 99% mortality.

Our findings could lead to radical changes in protocol, in which CPR is not immediately applied in unwitnessed arrest, and other techniques are used instead... [to] include using controlled reflow (adding specific chemical ingredients...) ...additional lab studies suggest this new... approach could possibly lead to treatments for stroke victims that avoid brain injury, since the same extended period of insufficient blood flow to the brain occurs... [T]here are 700,000 stroke victims annually in the United States alone. Further funding and research... are vitally needed.

A recent survey of 3,292 post-operative patients showed approximately 40% had septums that were bulging or showing "paradoxical motion." ....[A]fter valve surgery [it was] 60%. ...[T]he entire cardiovascular community (cardiologists and surgeons) has a lack in awareness of the critical importance of the septum.

[A] normal heart... is twisting and it's very happy. But... a sick heart... it's dilated and not very efficient. ...What you have to make, is a basketball into a football. ...[A]s you do this operation, it's... not very complicated. Here's the dilated ventricle with the scar in it. We basically open the scar, put a little stitch in there, bring the edges together, throw a patch in there and fix the ventricle. ...The job is to make abnormality normality... restore nature, restore the natural form.

Nature contains many pathways of clockwise and counterclockwise spirals that are called reciprocal spirals. One example of natural reciprocal spirals is the sea shell. If one takes the tip of that shell and draws it outward, the formation becomes a helix... very similar to the shape of the heart.

I used [Paco's] heart model... as my guide, to place pacemaker electrodes through a location on top of the septum... to reach the natural conducting system. The twisting motion was immediately reproduced to create normal heart performance!
This approach was applied to over 700 patients around the world... and yielded similarly positive outcomes. Yet conventional cardiac approaches have not changed. Why..? Manufacturers would need to produce new types of pacemakers... Cardiologists would need to learn new techniques... Acquiring proficiency... is a little harder at first, but once learned, requires only 20... minutes of added [surgery] time.

Fifty percent of [heart] failures are caused by poor contraction of the ventricle (systolic dysfunction) that pumps blood... But the other half have poor filling (diastolic dysfunction) of blood into the ventricle... despite... normal heart contraction. ...[T]here has been uncertainty in how to treat diastolic dysfunction because its mechanical causes have been unknown.

[T]he heart... is, in reality, a that contains an apex. The cardiac helix form... was described in the 1660s by Lower as having an apical , in which the muscle fibers go from outside in, in a clockwise way, and from inside out, in a counterclockwise direction.

[A] cathedral... has the principle of a and a . ...There's the heart. It's exactly the same thing. ...There's ...an iceberg. The iceberg and the heart are the same [form]. Imagination is that you have to see what is, not what you want to see. ...[T]he hurricane and a heart have exactly the same direction. They whirl in the same way. [T]he galaxy... it's exactly the same concept.

[N]ot only does the fingertip have a spiral, but [there is] the spiral at the tip of your heart. Perhaps the tip of your heart is your apical fingertip. ...The ventricle, which is the beating part of the heart, has a spiral... it goes from inside-out, and outside-in. That spiral is very typical. It goes down to the apex of the heart, the tip of the heart, which is a vortex. The thing that really makes the heart a part of an active way of living.

A dilemma that I see is that ignorant people are unknowledgable, but can learn. Arrogant people are knowledgeable but unable to be taught.

Understanding Paco’s "helix and wrap" structure solves this problem. ...[W]e found that suction accounts for most of filling (70%)... during the first 1/3 of the period when the heart relaxes... caused by how the figure-eight helix arms and its surrounding wrap interact. ...[W]hen the ventricle’s pumping ...during a heartbeat lasts longer than it is supposed to... [t]his shortens the available time for suction to fill... diastolic dysfunction develops. ...[W]e found ...calcium influences contraction and relaxation ... ...uniquely prevented calcium buildup. ...[T]he ...pharmacological trial ...failed after the manufacturer disregarded advice from the study’s steering committee. ...Diastolic dysfunction’s cause (helix and wrap dynamics) and curative drug (Cariporide) are neither taught in medical school, nor... known by... cardiologists...