Review of efforts to decrease costly leg wound complications in the medicare population following coronary revascularization.

Background: Current trends show that patients referred for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) are significantly older, sicker, and at higher risk for complications than ever before. Eliminating leg wound complications would significantly benefit these patients and reduce the consumption of health care time and dollars. Endoscopic vein harvesting (EVH) decreases the risk of wound complications in patients following CABG and may decrease costly long-term wound-related problems.

Controlled intermittent asystole cardiac therapy induced by pharmacologically potentiated vagus nerve stimulation in normal and hibernating myocardium.

Background: Pharmacologically potentiated electrical stimulation of the right vagus nerve achieves controlled intermittent asystole cardiac therapy. The present study examined pathophysiologic consequences of repetitive intermittent asystoles on contractile function, myocardial blood flow, and vagus nerve function and morphology.

Methods: Open-chest anesthetized canines, with either normal left anterior descending (LAD) coronary arteries (n = 8) or severely stenotic LADs (n = 8), received pharmacologic pretreatment with pyridostigmine (0.