[Intensive care for newborns and babies of the first year of life with acute heart failure after cardiosurgical interventions].

After cardiosurgical interventions, the incidence of low cardiac output syndrome (LCOS) is 3-10% depending on age and surgery. The basis for management of patients with LCOS and high pulmonary hypertension is to maintain low total peripheral vascular resistance and to exclude volume overload. Due to the fact that the Russian Federation lacked phosphodiesterase (PDE) III inhibitors that are basic intensive care drugs in pediatric surgery in the West, levosimendan was used as an inodilator in the complex intensive care for postoperative LCOS in 75 infants aged 3 days to 2 years 10 months in October to December 2007.

[The arsenal of extracorporeal circulation systems in pediatric cardiosurgery].

The paper presents the arsenal of extracorporeal circulation systems used in the surgical treatment congenital cardiac diseases. It provides some experience in using the extracorporeal circulation systems, indications for and contraindications for their use, and a working classification of extracorporeal circulatory techniques. Their methodological features, criteria for the adequate use of extracorcopreal techniques, and the results of their application are described.

[Acute respiratory distress syndrome in pediatric cardiosurgery].

The prognosis in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is poor; its mortality is generally 40-60%. The mortality in patients with ARDS is more commonly associated with the sequels of sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction than with respiratory failure although the latest papers on protective ventilation suggest that death in these patients directly results from lung lesion in a number of cases. There have been encouraging data on the reduced mortality rates due to acute lung lesion/ARDS in the past decade.

[Intensive care for newborns and infants after anatomic correction of transposition of great vessels].

A retrospective study was made in 48 babies undergone an arterial switching operation at the Bakulev Research Center of Cardiovascular Surgery in January 2004 to September 2005. Their age at surgery was 5 days to 11 months; body weight, 3.9 +/- 1.

[Changes in pulmonary vessels in complicated congenital valvular defects with high pulmonary hypertension].

349 cases of morphological alteration of pulmonary vessels with complex inborn heart defects (major vessels transposition with intraventricular septum deficiency, Taussig-Bing anomaly, double vessels departure from the right ventricle, common arterial trunk, single heart ventricle) were studied by the time and growth speed of structural vascular changes of lung circulation in correspondence with classification of Heath-Edwards. It is established that formation of morphological changes of pulmonary vessels in those defects takes place during the first half of year of patient life. Most malignant vascular changes occur in common arterial trunck and transposition of major vessels with a defect of the interventricular septum.