Aortic Dissection Course at the National Wetlab Centre.

The next Wetlab course at the NWC is the Aortic Dissection Course taught by Mr Graham Cooper and Mr Ahmed Nassef both from Northern General Hospital in Sheffield.

The course dates are Monday 5^th and Tuesday 6^th September 2011.

It is the first time we have run this course and it is a particularly good opportunity for trainees in the latter half of their cardiac surgical training (maybe ST4-6 level) to learn from Mr Cooper, who is a leading member of the SCTS Aortic Surgery Group and Mr Nassef with whom he often operates in this kind of case.

It is not an aortic valve course so much as a course relating to the surgery that cardiac surgeons do when the patient has pathology affecting their aorta - particularly the aortic arch - which needs some replacement. The kind of prostheses that might be used for this would include the Carboseal for example. There is also a range of surgical approaches that do not require the valve itself to be replaced at all.

In general terms, the challenge for the surgeon is in choosing the right option for the patient in each case rather than simply having the technical skills to perform the procedure that they have chosen. Very often, surgeons do this kind of surgery for the first time at 3.00am on a Sunday, in emergency conditions, when the patient is already 90% dead and under pressure to demonstrate the hairiness of their chest in the first few months of their consultant career. Many of the surgeons in our Wetlab faculty have said that they would have really valued some kind of course like this before they found themselves with the opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the kind of circumstances I describe. If you are interested in this course I would urgently recommend you register quickly.