[Chylothorax as a complication of coronary artery bypass grafting operation].

The authors present the case of a 72-year-old woman who underwent coronary bypass grafting. Left sided chylothorax due to accidental dissection of a thoracic duct branch developed 2 months after sternotomy. As conservative therapy has failed, surgical pleurodesis was performed successfully.

[Intraoperative fires caused by alcoholic skin antiseptic and diathermy].

Unlabelled: The authors describe two intraoperative fires during cardiac surgery. In both cases, in addition to the usual disinfection and isolation of the operating field, they wanted to reduce the infection hazard and to restore the partly ruined isolation by 70% alcoholic skin antiseptic solution. Soon after the disinfection, but before the evaporation of alcohol, diathermy was used and caused fire.

[Abdominal hernia repair with No-React treated bovine pericardial patch].

Unlabelled: In the last decades surgical treatment of abdominal wall hernias has extensively developed. Tension free reconstruction is essential to the successful operation, which can be achieved in many cases only with the use of hernia patch or mesh. Synthetic materials gained widespread use for this purpose, which markedly reduced recurrence rate; but they can cause infections and other serious complications.