Outcomes of the 10th international conference on pediatric mechanical circulatory support systems and pediatric cardiopulmonary perfusion

The 10th International Conference on Pediatric Mechanical Circulatory Support Systems and Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Perfusion was held at the Hall of Flags, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, May 28–31, 2014. The overall objective of the meeting has been and still is to bring together internationally known clinicians, bioengineers, and basic scientists involved in research on pediatric mechanical circulatory support (MCS) systems and pediatric cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) procedures. Primarily, we focus to explicitly describe the problems with current pediatric mechanical circulatory support systems, methods, and techniques during acute and chronic support, and to suggest solutions and future directions for research. Year after year, we not only maintain our primary objective, but also improve by adding several wet-labs with cutting-edge new devices along with in vivo experiments (1–4).