Cals International

In 2003 there was a cardiac arrest on a patient 4 hours post cardiac surgery. Over the following four hours his chest was re-opened three times and eventually the patient was re-grafted in his ICU bed on bypass. Many of the nursing and junior medical staff reported they felt disorganised and of little help to the situation and would have performed much better if they had a defined and well practised role. In response to this we created the Cardiac Surgery Advanced Life Support Course. We have devised a set of protocols that address the patient suffering a cardiac arrest and all common serious complications in ICU or on the ward. Our aim was to create a common language for all cardiothoracic practitioners. This protocol has grown and has been accepted as the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery's official protocol and has been accepted by the European Resuscitation Council. The Society of Thoracic Surgery also created an expert consensus statement which is published in the Annals of Thoracic surgery (Feb 2017) which sets these protocols as the standard of care in the USA. We hope this course will empower all practitioners to act with confidence to better treat our critically ill patients using well validated protocols, safely managing the patient until expert help arrives.