Modular Heart-Lung Machine for Extracorporeal Circulation
1985

When the heart is stopped and restarted in the operating room, one enters a “suspended reality,” between life and non-life. The heart marks time: stopping it means “taking the patient out of time.” While extracorporeal circulation—which replaces cardiac and pulmonary function while the heart is stopped—maintains vital parameters, the surgeon becomes a sort of watchmaker, adjusting the metronome of the patient’s life, a “craftsman of time.”

In that moment, the surgeon must change its version: no longer the quantitative time of Chronos, but the qualitative time of Kairos, the opportune moment.

When the heart restarts, one returns to the present, but the before and after will never be the same, as they have been transformed by the surgeon’s act, who bears the responsibility for that change.

Cardiac Surgery Unit
Padua University Hospital