Abstract
The authors present a short summary of the position of extracorporeal circulation (EC) in current medicine. At the beginning of the article they claim that it has been used for 51 years and that presently more than 750 000 heart surgeries are performed with its help every year.
EC is a complex method, it is a direct connection with the patient?s bloodstream and for a certain time it replaces heart and lungs functions. The authors then deal in more detail with the physiology of the blood flow during EC, with the problems of hypothermia and normothermia and with methods of anticoagulation.
In the following part of the article the authors name various parts of the whole system and describe their functions. At the end they mention EC?s negative effects on organism (SIRS, postperfusion syndrome and syndrome of multiorgan dysfunction) and they also introduce the work of a clinical perfusionist ? a specialist who is responsible for controlling the extracorporeal circulation during a heart operation.