Impella Mobile Lab Making Regional Stop at Lafayette General Medical Center

View a TV news report of the Impella lab that visited Columbus, MS, here:

In 2012, Lafayette General Medical Center (LGMC) became one of the first hospitals in the South to introduce The Impella® device, the world’s smallest heart pump. On Wednesday, November 4, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., LGMC will serve as an educational hub for the Impella when its manufacturer’s educational lab visits the hospital.

The Abiomed Mobile Learning Lab will make its only stop between Houston and New Orleans at LGMC to teach medical staff, such as physicians, nurses and cath lab techs, from across the region about the Impella procedure. The lab will provide hands-on experiences, casual product discussions, and lectures and presentations.

The lab, which folds out from a tractor-trailer to a 30’ by 90’ space, contains several simulator and video stations, a seating area and meeting room. It will be stationed in the parking lot of the Heymann Performing Arts Center, 1373 S. College Rd. in Lafayette. The simulator stations provide interactive situations and practice opportunities. That ranges from hands-on catheter placement and insertion, to viewing schematic set-up graphics and screens.

The original Impella is a small device inserted into the femoral artery in the thigh and guided into the left ventricle of the heart. That procedure, as well as today’s more advanced Impella devices, will be included in instruction at the lab. The miniature Impella pump is able to provide active support for a weakening heart by pumping enough blood to maintain sufficient cardiac output. The Impella procedure was first performed at LGMC in the summer of 2012 by a cardiologist with the Cardiovascular Institute of the South at Lafayette General. The Impella is typically used on patients suffering extremely fragile conditions such as advanced heart disease or severely damaged and failing hearts.