Gerald Buckberg Quotes

An alternate and effective three-step approach has been used experimentally... First, CPR specifically designed to provide sufficient blood pressure is employed to ensure blood nourishment to the brain. Second, body circulation is supported using a small portable heart-lung machine whose catheters easily access the groin arteries. ...Third, the dead heart is then brought back to life by the delivery of blood containing ...added ingredients ...[T]his new method was applied internationally to 34 sudden death patients. ...80% ...survived ...only one patient sustained brain injury. ...[W]ith present methods... 100% will die if CPR/defibrillation does not return an efficient heartbeat within 15 minutes. Yet these 34 patients underwent CPR for an average of 72 minutes... Because it also treated the cause behind the sudden death and not just the symptom (the heart stopping).

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?

Conclusive answers are not gained by adhering to past beliefs or by assuming that what seems logical is valid. The answer is only revealed through investigation.

Today, wonderful operations can be performed on babies to repair heart defects. This includes "blue babies." During the corrective procedure, high levels of oxygen are typically administered by a heart-lung machine... But... lung and heart damage may worsen. ...[O]ne cause of the problem were the high levels of oxygen administered ...as toxic substances are produced when such oxygen concentrations are metabolized. Babies are particularly vulnerable... Yet we found this "re-oxygenation injury" could be avoided by lowering oxygen levels delivered... There was excellent recovery of heart function without lung or body swelling. ...A 2012 overview on reoxygenation injury was published in the World Journal for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery that summarized international papers from others... [R]aising such questions to traditionalists garners vehement rejection, along with counterarguments that keeping oxygen levels high is a strategy ..."proven..." over many decades (since not all blue babies suffer damage...) They perceive the greater risk is losing the baby because of "insufficient... oxygen"... and... blame... unforeseen complications on other factors.

Heart attacks occur because a part of the heart stops squeezing after there is sudden loss of blood supply to that area. ...the damaged portion of the heart does not regain its ability to contract. The long-term aftermath is that 30% of surviving patients will develop heart failure within five years, despite having the artery successfully reopened. ...However, if instead of initially returning normal blood to the damaged region... we add specific ingredients to this nourishing blood and... control how it is delivered... contraction returns immediately. ...[T]he required equipment already exists in the cath lab, and needs only minor modifications. Yet this is not done, due to a lack of willingness to learn...

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.

[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.

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

No matter how much we dislike something, we always have to listen, and find if some nugget of truth, some change is available to us. We can't just dislike someone. We have to realize there are many parts to them.

[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.

The zebrafish is... interesting... It's aorta is 1/3 the size of a human hair. But yet.. it works exactly like yours and mine do. ...So we're not unique. We're just a part of a wonderful scheme of nature. ...[W]e're such a part of a scheme that we look at reciprocal spirals in heaven...

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.

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.

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.

There was a famous cardiologist named ... and he talked about the heart twisting...