Short-stay intensive care after coronary artery bypass surgery: randomized clinical trial on safety and cost-effectiveness.

Objective: To evaluate the safety and cost-effectiveness of short-stay intensive care (SSIC) treatment for low-risk coronary artery bypass patients.

Design: Randomized clinical equivalence trial.

Setting: University Hospital Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Evaluation of a new condensed extra-corporeal circuit for cardiac surgery: a prospective randomized clinical pilot study.

This prospective randomized clinical pilot study was conducted to evaluate a recently introduced reduced volume CPB system that is coated with the biopassive Xcoating. Twenty-two patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), either with a fully heparin-coated CPB circuit (control, n=11) or with an Xcoating coated condensed extra-corporeal circuit (CondECC, n=11), were included. We examined activation of the complement system (C3bc and C4bc), activation of neutrophils (BPI), the acute phase response (interleukin (IL)-6, and acute phase proteins (LBP, AGP, and CRP)), myocardial tissue injury (troponin T), hemolysis (free hemoglobin (FHb)), and clinical outcome parameters.

Neurological complications after coronary artery bypass grafting related to the performance of cardiopulmonary bypass.

Study Objectives: Neurologic disorders belong among the most serious complications of cardiac surgery. We tested the hypothesis that combinations of hemodynamic events from apparently normal cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) procedures are related to the development of postoperative neurologic complications and affect the impact of common clinical risk factors.

Design: Retrospective study.

Evaluation of "new" cardiac markers for ruling out myocardial infarction after coronary artery bypass grafting.

Study Objectives: This study was conducted to evaluate the value of serum troponin T, myoglobin, and creatine kinase (CK)-MB mass concentrations for ruling out perioperative myocardial infarction (poMI) early after cardiac surgery.

Design: Retrospective study.

Setting: Cardiothoracic surgery department in a university hospital.

Prestorage leucocyte reduction of red cell components prevents release of bactericidal permeability increasing protein and defensins.

Background And Objectives: In this study we examined whether prestorage leucocyte reduction prevents the accumulation of bioreactive substances in red cell units.

Materials And Methods: Measurements were performed in the supernatants of buffy-coat-depleted (standard red cells) and leucocyte-reduced (filtered red cells) red cell units. The effect of storage was evaluated by taking repetitive samples up to 35 days after donation.