Medical Definition of Cardiopulmonary bypass
1.
This refers to the placement of the patient onto extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to bypass the heart and lungs as, for example, in open heart surgery.
This device takes blood from the body, diverts it through a heart-lung machine (a pump-oxygenator) which oxygenates the blood prior to returning it to the systemic circulation under pressure.
The machine does the work both of the heart (pump blood) and the lungs (supply red blood cells with oxygen).
This allows the surgeon adequate time to perform primary heart surgery on a temporarily nonfunctioning heart.
(20 Jun 1998)
Lexicographical Neighbors of Cardiopulmonary Bypass
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