Programs in cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary technology prepare people to test and help physicians treat health problems of the heart and lungs. Students learn to operate equipment and monitor patients. They also learn to comfort patients and respond to emergencies.
Once upon a time, people believed that heart troubles were caused by the lungs becoming wrapped around the heart. Thankfully, medical knowledge and understanding have come a long way since then. And we know now that our lungs are not in the habit of giving our hearts a hug!
But our hearts and lungs do actually work closely together. As you may already know, we breathe in oxygen. Our lungs then put that oxygen into our blood and deliver that blood to our hearts. Our hearts pump it throughout our body to other organs, which need the oxygen to carry out many of their duties. Finally, the hearts returns the oxygen-low blood to the lungs, which exhale waste gases such as carbon dioxide back into the air.
Cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary technology programs give you the knowledge and abilities to keep hearts ("cardio-"), lungs ("pulmonary"), and blood vessels ("vascular") healthy.
Cardiovascular technology is usually divided into three areas: invasive, noninvasive, and vascular. Invasive cardiovascular technology students learn to insert probes and other instruments into a patient's body. This procedure helps heart doctors to both find out if there's a blockage in the blood vessels of the heart and to treat this problem if there is.
Students who study noninvasive cardiovascular technology learn how to perform tests that monitor a heart's performance. Typically, you learn how to run an electrocardiogram (usually abbreviated to EKG). An EKG machine tests a heart's rhythm to study heart rate and activity. The beating of your heart – that familiar "boomp-boomp" rhythm – is actually the sound of its valves closing during each cycle. Electrical impulses from a bundle of nerves in the heart stimulate it to pump. EKG machines pick up on the electrical impulses and translate a graph of the heart's beating to a screen.
As a student of a noninvasive cardiovascular program, you learn to analyze the image on the screen of an EKG machine and draw conclusions about the health of a patient's heart. In order to do this, you study the anatomy, structure, and function of the human heart. You would also learn to operate the electrical equipment that measures heart activity. You may also learn to use ultrasound technology to measure how well blood vessels bring blood to the brain.
Cardiopulmonary technology students learn to do the same tests and treatments that cardiovascular technology students do. In addition, they learn to perform pulmonary tests such as measuring lung size or seeing how well lungs work when under stress.
About 25 schools offer cardiovascular technology programs accredited by the Joint Review Committee on Education in Cardiovascular Technology. There are a few official cardiopulmonary programs as well. Both cardiovascular technology programs and respiratory therapy programs tend to overlap with cardiopulmonary technology. Because of this, they usually offer cardiopulmonary technology courses as well.
You can earn either an associate degree or a certificate in this program of study. An associate degree typically takes two to three years of full-time study after high school. If you already have an associate or bachelor's degree in science or another health-related field, a certificate usually takes an additional one to two years of study.