Cardiovascular Technician - Occupation

Cardio technician

The certified cardio technician is, together with surgeons, anesthetists and the OR nursing staff, a highly qualified member of the heart surgery team. The most important task of the cardio technician is to operate the heart-lung machine during heart-lung operations.

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• Official job title
• Tasks and work areas
• Informative links
• Legal basis

Official job title

Graduated cardio technician

Tasks and work areas

In cardiopulmonary operations, the qualified cardio technician is responsible for carrying out the heart-lung machine to maintain the circulatory and respiratory functions.

There is a spectrum of body parameters that must be monitored by the certified cardio technician and adapted to the current needs of the patient. Those areas of responsibility of the cardio-technical service during the extracorporeal circulation are the monitoring of blood coagulation inhibition (anticoagulation), the electrolyte and acid-base balance and the blood gas composition as well as the administration of blood products. Further tasks concern the use of an intra-aortic balloon pump or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for postoperative circulatory support. In some clinics, certified cardio technicians are also entrusted with the care of cardiac support systems, which are used to bridge the gap before a transplant orshould serve the recovery of the patient.

Where do cardio technicians work?

Graduated cardio technicians work in those hospitals where open heart operations are performed.

Solid education

The training to become a qualified cardio technician takes place part-time as part of an employment relationship in a hospital that has a ministerial approval as a training facility. It lasts at least 18 months and ends with the successful completion of a final examination before a committee. Prerequisites are either training as a radiology technologist or biomedical analyst or a professional qualification in the higher service for health and nursing and either successfully completed special training in intensive care or anesthesia care or the practice of intensive care or anesthesia care by at least for two years.

How are the costs going to be covered?

The costs for the services that qualified cardio technicians provide in the course of a hospital stay are covered by the social insurance institutions. You can find more information under What does the hospital stay cost?

Informative links

• Brochure health professions in Austria from the BMSGPK.
• Information on health professions on the BMSGPK website.
• Austrian Society for Cardiac Technology www.kardiotechnik.at

Legal basis

You can find relevant laws in the Legal Information System (RIS):

• Kardiotechnikergesetz, Federal Law Gazette I No. 96/1998, as amended
• Cardio Technician Training Ordinance, Federal Law Gazette II No. 335/2001, as amended