4th Annual MCSPERFCON Mechanical Circulatory Support & Perfusion Symposium

MCSPERFCON is the only meeting in the Texas Medical Center where you don’t just hear about ECMO, echocardiography and mechanical circulatory support — you put your hands on them. Now in its fourth year, the symposium brings together more than ninety faculty from institutions across the TMC, joined by invited national faculty, for a program built around one idea: the fastest way to learn a device is to stand next to it with the person who runs it every day.

This year, the venue is the crown jewel. MCSPERFCON 2026 takes over four floors of the TMC3 Collaborative Building — the centerpiece of Helix Park and the new front door of the Texas Medical Center. Didactics fill the Main Helix Hall. ECMO stations flank the seating on Level 1. Echocardiography runs all day in Hermann Hall Auditorium and the Levy Room on Level 2. Exhibitors and refreshments occupy Level 3. And the mechanical circulatory support workshop circles the fourth-floor Rotunda and the Braeswood Room in one continuous loop. For many attendees this will be their first time inside TMC3; for two days, the whole building is the classroom.

Day One is a single, continuous clinical narrative from shock physiology to the total artificial heart: recognizing and phenotyping cardiogenic shock, resuscitation before mechanical support, the intra-aortic balloon pump, Impella, right-sided support, VAD physiology for non-VAD providers, and biventricular failure — every session followed by a multidisciplinary panel of intensivists, cardiologists, surgeons, perfusionists and nurses working through real decisions together.

Day Two is where MCSPERFCON stands apart. Choose one of two all-day tracks:

Track 1 — ECMO and Mechanical Circulatory Support. A morning of VV and VA ECMO lectures wrapped around a six-station hands-on ECMO workshop on the floor of the Helix Hall: trace a live circuit tip to tip, troubleshoot low flow and loss of pulsatility on a simulator, place a dual-lumen cannula and a femoral–femoral configuration on a mannequin under ultrasound, and work through North–South and East–West physiology at the bench. In the afternoon, four floors up, a seven-station mechanical circulatory support workshop: balloon pumps, Impella, right and left ventricular assist devices, and two total artificial heart designs — pneumatic pulsatile and continuous-flow rotary — with consoles running and the clinicians who manage them at your side.

Track 2 — Critical Care Echocardiography. A full day of lectures and scanning skill stations in small groups on Level 2: lung ultrasound and FAST, ventricular function and tamponade, fluid responsiveness and VExUS, echo in MCS management, and rescue transesophageal echocardiography in the unstable patient. You leave scanning better than you arrived.

Accredited for a maximum of 14.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™, 14.00 ANCC contact hours, and 17.1 ABCP Category I CEUs. Designed for intensivists, cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, anesthesiologists, emergency physicians, perfusionists, critical care nurses, advanced practice providers, fellows and trainees.

Hands-on seats are limited by design. Register early.

▶ Watch the preview: https://lnkd.in/p/gmTugaya
Register: [https://cpd.education.bcm.edu/content/4thMCSPerfCon