Bender Gestalt Evaluation of Brain Dysfunction Following Open-Heart Surgery

Summary

The heart-lung machine makes open-heart surgery possible by providing extracorporeal blood circulation; however, it creates microemboli in the blood that cause neurological damage. A new filter, designed to remove these emboli, was assessed by preoperative and postoperative Bender Gestalt testing. A lesser degree of the kinds of visual-motor difficulties associated with neurological deficit was produced by patients who received filtered blood. Postoperative impairment was assessed with some precision by using the Pascal-Suttell method of scoring distortions of Bender designs. The Bender scores were consistent with ultrasonic (sonar) counts of microemboli.