TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6 31 Q | If I was a patient today presenting with the same symptoms, what would you do for me? A | About 70-80 percent of patients today are treated with stent grafts. We don't even make a groin incision anymore. These devices are delivered percutaneously and re-line the inside of the aorta. That didn't exist when I trained. Anyone in my specialty of vascular surgery had to completely retrain in imaging, cathe- ters and wires. Q | It's similar to fixing a blown tire from the inside. A | Re-lining the pipe is basically what it is. Q | What enticed you to come to Baylor College of Medicine? A | A friend of mine, Dr. Larry Hollier, now chancellor at Louisiana State University, was a visiting professor at Emory. (His son, Larry, Jr., is a plastic surgeon at Baylor). Larry, Sr. subsequently came down to Baylor, and the chairman at Baylor said he needed a chief of vascular surgery. Larry happened to give him my name. I always blame Larry for how I ended up in Houston. Q | What did you think of the Texas Medical Center once you arrived? A | Well, I knew Dr. DeBakey, Dr. Stanley Crawford and Dr. Cooley were all here. These were the men who built the well we now all drink from: contemporary surgical treatment of cardiovascular disease. But I had no idea of the scale of the medical center. So I was completely blown away with what was happening here. But while we at Emory had embraced the endovascular revolution, Houston was behind the times in terms of vascular evolution. The vascular community recog- nized early on that we needed to change our practice, to retool our workforce and transform how, for exam- ple, aneurysm repair—which had been developed in Houston—was now being done. Most vascular surgery was being performed by cardiac surgeons. There were no vascular surgeons here. I was one of the first trained vascular surgeons to move into the medical center, and Dr. Charles McCollum, a cardiovascular surgeon at Baylor, had the vision to encourage this. You're now starting to see the same kind of change take place in cardiac surgery because of percutaneous valves. I think percutaneous valves are to cardiac surgery what aneurysm repair was to vascular surgery. Q | What do you see on the medical horizon? A | The transformation that has taken place is around imaging. It is the integration of imaging into hybrid labs and operating rooms that will absolutely trans- form how we work. Many procedures that had to be conducted in radiology departments, because of the availability of imaging, will move to cath labs and hybrid rooms. It will be one-stop shopping. Q | At Houston Methodist, what excites you most about coming to work every day? A | Let me tell you a story. I don't want to get into the politics of the Baylor-Methodist split, but when I moved down here I was employed by Baylor. Dr. DeBakey was my boss; life was pretty good. It was a tremendous partnership and, without Baylor and Methodist together, I probably wouldn't have moved. When the split occurred, for those of us in the middle of it, it wasn't exactly obvious what to do. I opted to stay at Methodist, where we had a large practice and had already built the first advanced imaging operating rooms in the medical center. It was a very odd time. I'd been in academic surgery my entire life. But now, overnight, at Methodist: no medical students, no resi- dents, no fellows, no research labs. Indeed, there were no departments, no department chairs, no faculty, no institutional review board, no graduate medical edu- cation office. Under the leadership of John Bookout and Ron Girotto, Houston Methodist decided to build a brand new academic organization, which, other than the clinical care component, had to be completely retooled from scratch. For me, this was both terrifying and exciting. Really, as an academic organization, Houston Methodist is a startup. Ten years old. I am extremely proud of what has been achieved, the speed at which this has been accomplished and the trajectory of our academic programs. Q | Tell us about the new North Tower that's under construction. A | It'll open in just over a year and will house the new cardiovascular operating rooms, catheterization labs, cardiovascular intensive care unit and patient care floors. That's the missing piece for the heart and vascular center. Dr. DeBakey's spirit is part of the Fondren Brown operating room, which we currently occupy—probably the most famous cardiovascular operating room in the world. We're still working in the same operating rooms and using the same inten- sive care unit that Drs. DeBakey and Crawford used. They're functional but not very attractive, and they're not where we should be at this point in the evolution of the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center. WEBCAST PARTICIPANTS 2,725 ATTENDEES SINCE THE LAUNCH 1,970 COUNTR IES PARTICIPATING 33 STATES PARTICIPATING 29 WHEN Monday, Dec. 5, 8 a.m. WHERE ExxonMobil Houston Campus 22777 Springwoods Village Pkwy. Spring, Texas INFO & SIGN-UP pumpsandpipes.com Q | This December marks the 10th anniversary of Pumps & Pipes, an annual event you co-founded. The story goes that you struck up a conversation with a drilling engineer on a flight to Houston and the two of you realized the similarities between drilling for oil and performing heart surgery. Now, there's an annual symposium that brings together people in medicine, energy, academia and aerospace to exchange and explore ideas. A | Bill Klein, an Exxon Mobil engineer, and I started P&P, as we call it. It involves the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, ExxonMobil, the University of Houston and NASA. We now have teach- ers coming in, rotating through labs to take the mes- sage back to students. We're at the point where we're trying to figure out what more to do. It's stretching our capabilities. We webcast to more than 2,500 individual sites around the world. Our next meeting is Dec. 5 at the new Exxon facility in Spring. Come and join us! Q | There's such a great kinship between surgeons and engineers. A | Yes, but physicians take for granted—which we shouldn't—the privilege of caring for patients. It's very gratifying. Engineers by and large don't get that privilege. So when I stand up in front of an audience full of engineers and start explaining that I've got a problem with a heart valve or a burst aneurysm, and explain this as a pump or a pipe problem, well you can see the light bulbs going off. The engineers are highly motivated by the fact that knowledge they have can be used to help their fellow man. That, in essence, is what pumps and pipes is about. We call it "exploring the other guy's toolkit." Alan Lumsden, M.D., was interviewed by William F. McKeon, executive vice president and chief strategy and operating officer of the Texas Medical Center. PUMPS & PIPES AT A GL A NCE PUMPS & PIPES 10

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