Perfusion students and faculty test optimal transit time for cardiac drugs

When one student asked Christopher Yann, then on faculty at Vanderbilt University, a question he couldn’t answer about drug transit times from the extracorporeal circuit to the patient during cardiac surgery, he said, “Well, let’s just go down to the lab and try it out.”

They did, and it turned out that the answer wasn’t simple to determine and there isn’t much current data available. After coming to Lipscomb in January 2022 as the simulation coordinator for the School of Cardiovascular Perfusion, he decided to carry out experiments using dye and its perfusion simulation equipment to better determine how quickly drugs take effect in a patient during cardiac surgery, depending on the injection point.

As the experiments progressed, Lipscomb’s College of Pharmacy came on board as a partner with Yann and his students, McKenzie Bangasser (ms ’23) and Josie Anderson (ms ’23), providing the use of a photo spectrometer so they could use the real drugs in the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit and measure the transit time from different injection points more accurately.

“Through these experiments, we can get a feel for what a perfusionist should do during a surgery if he or she wants a drug to reach a patient at a specific time to counteract potential damage to the heart,” said Yann.

The interdisciplinary nature of the research project brings home to students how important it is to be familiar with the role every person in the operating room is playing, said Yann. “Communication is our lifeblood in the operating room. If we are not on the same team, we are in trouble.”

Perfusion students Daniel Nicks and Samantha Mullvain are expected to continue the study over the course of the next school year.

“This study looks like it has a very good possibility of impacting the profession, so I jumped at the opportunity to research it with Professor Yann and my fellow students,” said Nicks, of Northridge, California. “I believe this research will result in the best patient care possible by ensuring rapid administration of the drugs to the patient.”

The center sent its first team to the Nuri site, a royal cemetery and acropolis with several pyramids, in January. Three Lipscomb Ph.D. students joined Dr. Tom Davis, professor and associate director, to clear a sufficient amount of the temple to determine if any ancient reliefs/or inscriptions were intact, and, if so, to record them.

The Nuri site has been featured in documentaries and while working at the site, Dr. James K. Hoffmeier, a famed Egyptologist, interacted with the Lanier team.

“Nuri provides our students a very rare experience of excavating a very significant site including pyramids, temples and churches. This site provides students’ access to unpublished archaeological material to use in their dissertation studies,” said Davis.

Abila is known as one of the cities of the Decapolis, 10 Roman cities east of the Jordan River. It was home to five prominent churches during the Byzantine period.

“Abila straddles the Christian/Islamic interface in Jordan and will provide new insight into how Christians responded on a local level to the Islamic conquest of Jordan in the 7th century AD,” said Davis. “We are winding down our excavation at Kourion, a 4th century AD site on Cyprus, so this project will allow the Lanier Center to remain active in the archaeology of Late Antiquity and Early Christianity.”