Gerald Buckberg Quotes

[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.

Stopping the heart is accomplished by shutting off its blood supply (a process called ). I discovered blood ... We initally realized the return of regular blood to a heart that has been without blood supply, will create severe damage. We then discovered how to prevent this injury by using a blood cardioplegic solution that contains selected chemical ingredients (including key amino acids...)that safely protects the heart... [E]ffectiveness... depended upon their arriving at specific locations... But many of our patients had narrowed arteries... This barrier was overcome by delivering it in a "backward direction" via the heart’s main vein... further enhanced by administering it at different temperatures during the beginning and end of the operation.

[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.

Creation... is filling an empty room with new ideas. Testing them with ongoing change as you learn. It's a process. It's never an event. It's a process... ask questions and you begin to answer them.

I picked up a book [The Illustrations from the Works of Andreas Vesalius of Brussels ed., Saunders & O'Malley] on Vesalius... [H]e cut the heart... to see the different cavities... in the 1500s. ...[T]he cardiac structure is the first example since Leonardo da Vinci showing the thickness of the walls and the shape of the cavities.

I looked up Leonardo [Leonardo Da Vinci The Anatomy of Man: Drawings from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II] to see what Leonardo found. Leonardo... showed also that the heart had these different cavities with different sizes. ...[H]e said "The apex, or tip of the heart comprises the left ventricle." ...[T]hat ...is the vortex. And then Leonardo made these fabulous drawings ...and he looked at the aorta, and he found as the blood came out it goes in reciprocal spirals going in different directions. ...[H]e said that's how the blood flows.

Dr Torrent-Guasp... formalized this description by indicating that the heart looked like a "rope"... [in] three parts: a beginning and an end at the and ; a wraparound loop called a basal loop; and... a helix that he called the apical loop. ...He described a [billion year old] worm... with a vascular tube... like a rope, with a venous and an arterial system. ...[F]ish evolved to show the first generation of a heart, containing a single pumping chamber, and included gills... [Next] the amphibian and the reptile appeared, in which we observe an atrium and a ventricle. Each chamber was separated by an atrial and ventricular septal defect. Human beings developed... [later] and both the atrial defect and the ventricular defect are closed.

William Harvey... who in England discovered the circulation... wrote this wonderful book called Anatomical Exercises... [S]uddenly he is here with the new idea of the circulation and some other ideas... He contradicted Vesalius who fitted to the Galenic system of ebb and flow concept. That's the twist and suction that the heart always has. Harvey says it didn't happen that way. It didn't dilate and take the shape of cupping glass and suck blood into it. Well, Harvey was a brilliant and wonderful person, but he wasn't perfect, and he was wrong. Because the heart does exactly what he said it didn't do.

If you pick the heart up and look at the bottom... there are s... a spiral going inside-out, and outside-in. The same reciprocal spirals happen in flowers. ...[T]he circles get bigger as they get further outward. ...[T]hat increase in size is the secret of growth. ...[T]hese beautiful reciprocal spirals... are not just in daisies, but you see this in seashells... you pick the tip of the spiral... or the shell up... it becomes a , just like the heart... or the horns of an eland. ...Inside the horns ...are spirals within spirals. ...[T]he spirals... go into the... blueprint of life...in DNA between the sugar and the s. The use of the same reciprocal spirals exist in the microscopic way, just as they exist macroscopically in the galaxy. ...We all have spirals in our fingertips... But your finger is different than somebody else's finger, and that's because there is harmony in variance.

Sudden death... cardiac arrest... occurs because the heart suddenly stops (having either no beat, or develops a totally ineffective beat such as ). CPR is typically performed... and if one is available, a defibrillator... restoring the heartbeat. Yet... the harsh reality is that 85 to 90% of these patients die, and severe brain damage develops in half of those who do survive. ...CPR, defibrillation ...does not address the heart defect ...[W]hy stay so stubbornly attached to a method in which 85 to 90% of patients perish?

Clearly it’s important not to injure the septum during operations. So why is it happening repeatedly? ...[L]ikely ...improper myocardial protection (the technique used to protect the heart... that was my initial major medical discovery and quickly adopted worldwide). We... tested 119 consecutive patients and found no septum damage when protection was done correctly. ...Successful protection involves ...the cardioplegic solution and adopting a correct delivery strategy. ...[I]f surgeons are to prevent the all-too-frequent injury to the heart’s vital septum, they must avoid taking shortcuts that compromise this essential combination.

In managing heart failure in dilated hearts, we must recognize its cause is flawed heart anatomy... normality is restored after rebuilding the natural cardiac 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]f you look at the helical heart, you see a hidden harmony of spirals. You see the DNA... the blueprint... You see the ventricle... You see that you have ejection and suction with the spirals going in different directions, with the spirals within spirals. You see it in the microscopic structure of the heart, the different forms of the heart called the , , , <nowiki>[</nowiki>]... It's all the same. It's a reproduction of what is normal and very efficient.

[T]he age-old obstacle to growth, it's called rigidity. ...When you talk about... finding an answer, proving it, and nobody uses it. A book called by ... it was about... who worked in a maternity ward and found that many women after they gave birth... would die. ...He found the women that lived were delivered by the wet nurses and the women that died were delivered by the doctors... He realized that the doctors that would deliver the babies, go across the street [and] do an autopsy, but there's no germ theory. The doctors would wipe off their hands, and go back and infect the women. ...[H]e said, what you have to do is to wash your hands. He told the Titans of medicine. They still exist today. All these Titans of medicine that know everything, that you're doing it wrong. ...[T]hey didn't listen to him but eventually... it did win, it was right, because truth always wins.