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Even though they are miniaturized, the recording rooms' electronic instruments that give the surgeons so much information fill huge, stainless steel consoles studded with a bewildering array of knobs, screens and lights. Signals from the consoles go not only to the display boards in the operating room, but to similar panels in observation rooms for visiting surgeons, and to the consoles at which technicians sit, behind glass panels, only a few feet from the operating table. The console technicians are in telephone communication with the operating team, and they make many adjustments of equipment that used to clutter the operating room itself.
24 Channels. Each 3-ft. by 4-ft. display board consists of an oscilloscope and a panel on which the information from the scope's wave forms can be read numerically. The surgeon can select as many as eight of 24 different channels for this "readout board," and he can switch channels whenever he wants to. He can even get the technicians to play back a previous part of the record for comparison with current wave forms.
"We have been able to reduce the number of people in the heart room to a hard core of seven," says Dr. Farrier. "Three surgeons, an anesthesiologist, the instrument nurse who handles only sterile materials, a circulating nurse for the rest, and a technician. Since surgery involves teaching, we put in a good color TV monitor over the operating table, and keep the surgical observers out of the room."
Plugged In & Out. The heart patient is taken to the second floor on a wheeled operating table, already hooked up to all the electrical leads for all the monitoring devices that will help him through the operation. In the anesthesia room, the electrical leads are plugged into a pedestal connected with the recording room, and the anesthesiologist (a physician) gives the chosen mixture of oxygen and anesthetic gases. Then patient and table are wheeled into the operating room, and the monitoring equipment leads are plugged into another pedestal there.
Above the heart surgery table and its brilliant lights, a cylinder 15 ft. wide pours out a flow of sterile air, at 6,000 cu. ft. a minute, adjusted to the most desirable temperature and humidity. The air is drawn off near the floor and is not recirculated. So efficient is this system that not more than one microbe or grain of pollen gets through in every hundred cubic feet of air.
Even before last week's dedication staff members had tried out the new rooms. Said NIH Director James Shannon: "This setup will be out of date tomorrow, but it's the ultimate in what's available today."
*At the head for heart operations, but at the foot for head operations, so that the gear will not be in the brain surgeon's way.