Post-cardiac surgery depression and confusion. Why is it called "Pump Head"?

[astro]

This Inquirer speculates President Clinton has indications of “Pump Head” I’m not concerned with the veracity of the Inquirer speculation re President Clinton, but I am curious about this “pump head” syndrome. Why is it called “Pump Head”? Does it occur with other surgeries? Is it due to physiological trama or emotional stress? Is it really sort of a (relatively) hush-hush phenomenon that surgeons don’t really talk about?

Brain damage fears were raised more than a month into Clinton’s recuperation when he failed to recognize a Secret Service agent who has been with him since 2001, a source with ties to the Clintons told The ENQUIRER.

Dr. Richard N. Fogoros, a cardiologist and former director of cardiac electrophysiology at the University of Pittsburgh, who is not treating Clinton, told The ENQUIRER brain damage is not unusual after heart surgery.

“A substantial proportion of patients experience measurable impairment in their mental capabilities,” he said.

Side effects include memory loss, stilted speech, confusion, depression, and reduced hand-eye coordination. Some patients also suffer diminished sex drive.

The condition is called postsurgical neurocognitive deficits, but physicians commonly refer to it as “pump head” syndrome

Pump Head - Cognitive Impairment After Bypass Surgery

A study from Duke University, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February, 2001, confirms what many doctors have suspected, but have been reluctant to discuss with their patients: A substantial proportion of patients after coronary artery bypass surgery experience measurable impairment in their mental capabilities. In the surgeons’ locker room, this phenomenon (not publicized for obvious reasons) has been referred to as “pump head.”

[astro]

Never mind I think I found it.

Off -pump bypass surgery reduces clots to brain -February 2, 2001

A long-known but little-discussed phenomenon associated with standard coronary artery bypass surgery is the showering of the brain with “microemboli” (tiny blood clots) while the patient is on the heart bypass machine (a pump that takes the place of the heart during the operation). Such microemboli have been blamed for the so-called “pump head” syndrome that occurs in some patients after bypass surgery - a (usually mild) loss of memory and cognitive function.

[SuperNelson]

I had problems like this after my last heart surgeries. It was a repair to a substantial aortic aneurism, and they used phenobarbitol and profound hypothermia to protect my brain from the oxygen deprivation while they worked. For the next 6 months or so, I felt a little foggy, a little manic, and periodically had episodes where I felt dizzy, vertigo, and my lips and tongue went numb.

I ended up seeing a neurologist, who asked me what I thought the cause was. I said “freezer burn.”