Publications by authors named "Avlonitis Vassilios"

Objectives: Right ventricular-to-pulmonary artery coupling has been associated with outcomes in mitral regurgitation treated by transcatheter approaches. We evaluated right ventricular-to-pulmonary artery coupling as a predictor of survival and postoperative length of hospital stay (LOS) in patients with mitral regurgitation undergoing mitral valve surgery.

Methods: In this retrospective analysis (median follow-up: 5.

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Introduction: Being on a waiting list for elective (planned) cardiac surgery can be physically and psychologically challenging for patients. Research suggests that stress associated with waiting for surgery is dependent on different individual and contextual factors. However, most data on patients' experiences of waiting for surgery and preferences for waiting list management derives from non-cardiac clinical populations.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study looked at the results of a heart surgery called surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in over 31,000 people in the UK, including those who also had another surgery called CABG.
  • It found that the risk of dying from the surgery was low, around 1.9% for those with only SAVR and a bit higher for those who had CABG too.
  • The study showed that the type of surgery and the patient's health before surgery affected the outcomes, but most surgeries were planned ahead of time rather than done in emergencies.
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Background: Good blood management is an important determinant of outcome in cardiac surgery. Guidelines recommend restrictive red blood cell transfusion. Our objective was to systematically review the evidence from randomised controlled trials and observational studies that are used to inform transfusion decisions in adult cardiac surgery.

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It has been suggested previously that rebound hypercoagulability may be responsible for morbidity and mortality following clopidogrel cessation in adults with acute coronary syndrome. We report a case of acute occlusion of a modified Blalock-Taussig shunt in an infant after clopidogrel discontinuation.

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Introduction: Donor brain death is the first injurious event that can produce inflammatory dysfunction after pulmonary transplantation. This study was designed to determine whether stimulation of the toll-like receptor (TLR) system contributes to the changes produced by brain death.

Materials And Methods: Rats were repeatedly treated with specific agonists for TLR4 or TLR2/6 to desensitize these receptors.

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Background: It has been previously shown that donor treatment with aprotinin or inhaled nitric oxide reduces reperfusion injury after lung transplantation in animals. These studies used living donors with normal lungs. However, the main source of lungs for transplantation is brain-dead donors.

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Background: The autonomic storm accompanying brain death leads to neurogenic pulmonary edema and triggers development of systemic and pulmonary inflammatory responses. Neurogenic vasoplegia exacerbates the pulmonary injury caused by brain death and primes the lung for ischemia reperfusion injury and primary graft dysfunction in the recipient. Donor resuscitation with norepinephrine ameliorates the inflammatory response to brain death, however norepinephrine has deleterious effects, particularly on the heart.

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Brain-dead donors are the major source of lungs for transplantation. Brain death is characterized by two hemodynamic phases. Initially, massive sympathetic discharge results in a hypertensive crisis.

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Objective: At the time of lung transplant, we routinely perform bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) of the donor lungs on the recipient operating table immediately before implantation, for bacterial and fungal cultures. We sought to determine whether the results correlate with the outcome.

Methods: We retrospectively analysed 115 consecutive cadaveric lung transplants (single lung: 42; bilateral lung: 63; heart-lung: 10) performed over 4 years.

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The paucity of suitable lung donors and the high early mortality as the result of primary graft failure remain major challenges in pulmonary transplantation. There is evidence that the lung is injured in the donor by the process of brain death and often is made unusable or fails posttransplantation after amplification of the injury by the process of ischemia-reperfusion. An understanding of the mechanism of donor lung injury could lead to the development of new treatment strategies for the donor to reduce lung injury, increase the number of donors with acceptable lungs, and improve the results of transplantation.

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