Objective: Outline the importance of incorporating evidence based practices into the conduct of Perfusion. In a classroom like setting with open feedback from attendees, we will explore a variety of implications for adopting such practices both clinically and professionally.

Evidence-based medicine is in fact a movement. A movement within all of health care that seeks to improve the care of an individual patient, reduce the societal cost associated with delivery of care, and prevent the preventable untoward events that we refer to as complications. The result of such effort will allow us all to raise the bar, the standard of care and bring to bear all of what is available to help the individual patient with whom we are charged the responsibility of being individually accountable for; caring for the ill.

The conduct of Perfusion and the management of patients via extracorporeal circulation are inherently linked to this process. Understanding how we are currently practicing, how we as a department must proactively participate in the institutional delivery of open heart surgery and how we educate those enrolled in perfusion education programs as well as our peers currently practicing, will contribute to that higher standard of care. Within this presentation and session, we will explore how the audience is approaching this paradigm shift clinically and professionally. We will introduce the concept of evidence-based perfusion practice, which is absolutely without question, a multi-specialty team endeavor. We will review critical analysis of the literature pertaining to open heart surgery and cardiopulmonary bypass, develop an understanding of the implications related to evidence based perfusion practice, and provide insight for establishing departmental evidence based guidelines. The evidence already exits to support how clinical results improve as an individual surgeon develops an operative team approach to a specific operation. The enhanced result is often ascribed to the individual surgeon, but is most certainly related to a comprehensive and coordinated team