Northern New England Chapter HSPA

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Northern New England Chapter HSPA NNEC is the local chapter of HSPA for Maine and New Hampshire. Dedicated to serving our SP community! Visit www.nnehspa.org for more information.

25/10/2025

In the early 1930s, a 23-year-old medical student named Michael E. DeBakey sat in a small lab at Tulane University with a bold vision. At the time, blood transfusions were risky, and complex heart surgery was still a dream.

Determined to improve patient care, DeBakey built a continuous-flow roller pump using basic materials and extraordinary ingenuity. He couldn’t have known then that his invention would later become a key component of the heart-lung machine, the very technology that made open-heart surgery possible.

But Dr. DeBakey didn’t stop there. Throughout his career, he revolutionized surgery with innovations that changed medicine forever:

❤️Pioneered the first carotid endarterectomy to prevent strokes (1953)
❤️Developed techniques for coronary artery bypass surgery (1964)
❤️Helped create the left ventricular assist device (LVAD) to support failing hearts (1966)
❤️Designed specialized vascular surgical instruments, including the now-famous DeBakey forceps and DeBakey vascular clamps, which are still used in operating rooms worldwide today.

By the end of his career, Dr. DeBakey had performed over 60,000 surgeries, trained thousands of surgeons, and built a legacy that touched nearly every corner of cardiovascular medicine.

To learn more about Dr. DeBakey, click here: https://educate.beyondclean.net/4mPwGKI

25/10/2025

On August 22, 1920, Denton Arthur Cooley was born in Houston, Texas, a city where he would later transform the future of cardiovascular surgery.

After earning his zoology degree from the University of Texas, Cooley graduated from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 1944. During his surgical training at Johns Hopkins, he worked alongside the legendary Dr. Alfred Blalock, assisting in the first "Blue Baby" procedure to correct an infant's congenital heart defect.

Over the decades, he didn’t just practice heart surgery, he pioneered it:

🫀 Founded the Texas Heart Institute, which became a global leader in cardiovascular care, research, and education (1962)
🫀Successfully performed the first bloodless open-heart surgery on a Jehovah's Witness patient (1962) and laid the groundwork for the field of bloodless medicine and surgery
🫀 Performed the first successful human heart transplant in the United States (1968, *measuring success in days/months rather than hours)
🫀 Implanted the first total artificial heart as a temporary bridge to transplantation (1969)
🫀 Developed the Cooley vascular clamp which was designed to gently control blood vessels without causing trauma
🫀 Developed safer artificial heart valves, the Cooley-Cutter heart valve and the Lemole-Cooley Mitral Heart Valve, which drastically improved survival rates for valve replacement surgeries
🫀 Trained generations of surgeons and published 1,300+ scientific papers, leaving a legacy of knowledge and advancement.

By the time he stepped away from the operating room, Cooley had performed tens of thousands of open-heart surgeries, forever changing how we treat heart disease. ❤️

25/10/2025

🩺 Fun Fact Friday: The Story Behind the Bookwalter Retractor

If you've worked in the OR for any length of time, you've heard of the Bookwalter. But behind the name engraved on that retractor ring was a surgeon with an inventive spirit, Dr. John R. Bookwalter, a man whose curiosity and creativity helped reshape surgical retraction and surgical care.

Dr. Bookwalter was born in Ohio in 1938. Both his grandfather and his father were physicians, and his mother was a nurse, and their influence along with an early exposure to paitent care, led him to pursue medicine as well. After graduating cm laude from Amherst College and earning his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, Dr. Bookwalter served his country as a surgeon in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, eventually rising to the rank of Colonel in the Army Reserve.

It was in the operating room that inspiration struck. Long surgeries required assistants to manually hold retractors for hours, which was not only exhausting, but could be imprecise. Dr. Bookwalter saw a better way. In the 1970s, he began developing a table-mounted retraction system that could free the assistant’s hands ad provide consistent exposure and visibility.

In 1979, the first Bookwalter Retractor System was introduced, and it quickly became an essential tool in open surgery. For more than four decades, its innovative design has stood the test of time, used in operating rooms around the world.

Dr. Bookwalter often said, “Good exposure is the key to good surgery.” His invention made that principle a reality, transforming how surgeons approach complex cases and ensuring better outcomes for patients everywhere.

Dr. Bookwalter passed away peacefully on May 2, 2025, but his legacy lives on in operating rooms around the world.

How are *you* being celebrated this week? How are you celebrating your peers!? We love to see folks get creative and use...
13/10/2025

How are *you* being celebrated this week?

How are you celebrating your peers!? We love to see folks get creative and use this week to not only build up their team but put their own little spin on things!

13/10/2025

Thank you for all you do each and every day. We make surgery safer with our continuous efforts. You matter! Let’s celebrate each other and our teams for how we impact lives each and every day. We rock!!!!

We want to take a minute to thank everyone for making their way out to Portland for our Scare to Care event! It was wond...
05/10/2025

We want to take a minute to thank everyone for making their way out to Portland for our Scare to Care event! It was wonderful to put so many faces to the names we’ve been chatting with and seeing everyone’s top tier costumes!

Big things are coming to Northern New England!

And your CEU certificates are coming to your email by end of day Monday! Pinky promise.

Don't ghost on the costume contest Saturday! 👻First prize is an awesome gift from our sponsor, RMPS Publishing, which in...
02/10/2025

Don't ghost on the costume contest Saturday! 👻

First prize is an awesome gift from our sponsor, RMPS Publishing, which includes a set of Instrument Coaching Cards AND "The World of Surgical Instruments" 2nd Edition textbook by Rick Schultz!

We can't wait to see what you come up with!

Don't forget to check your email for the link to our virtual election ballot!

The virtual chapter ballot is LIVE on our website! Click the link below to vote on our ballot question and candidates.ht...
01/10/2025

The virtual chapter ballot is LIVE on our website!
Click the link below to vote on our ballot question and candidates.

https://nnehspa.org/so/0ePcT2TD3?languageTag=en

In-person voting will take place Saturday, October 4th at our conference. Election results will be announced at the end of the show!

👻 Saturday is almost here! 👻🎃 Speakers: Seth Robinson (MaineHealth), Adam Okada (Healthmark), and Jake McHugh (Agiliti) ...
30/09/2025

👻 Saturday is almost here! 👻

🎃 Speakers: Seth Robinson (MaineHealth), Adam Okada (Healthmark), and Jake McHugh (Agiliti)

💀 Steris IMS Truck Tours

🎃 Costume Contest

💀 Raffle Prizes

🎃 Interactive Games

💀 Vendor Fair

🎃 Chapter Elections

Register Here… if you dare!🧛‍♀️

https://www.nnehspa.org/event-details/scare-to-care-a-haunted-healthcare-summit

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