It has been a historical supposition that aortic surgery, even in an elective setting, has been associated with the transfusion of large amounts of blood products. We feel that this assumption is now dated, and in fact far fewer patients now receive allogenic blood products. To assess this assumption, we carried out a retrospective chart review of all patients who underwent elective aortic surgery over an 18-month period from April 1994 to October 1995.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Preoperative cardiac evaluations have been advocated prior to major vascular procedures to reduce the incidence of postoperative cardiac complications. This study was undertaken to evaluate the efficacy and predictive value of routine dobutamine echocardiography (DE) in the screening of patients undergoing elective aortic surgery.
Methods: Dobutamine echocardiography was performed preoperatively on all patients having elective aortic procedures by our university surgical group from June 1995 to August 1996.
Severely injured trauma patients are at increased risk of pulmonary embolism (PE). Certain injuries may preclude the use of standard prophylactic measures, and even when used, these measures may be ineffective in the trauma population. We defined a group of trauma patients who are at statistically elevated risk of venous thromboembolic events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA cDNA covering most of the coding sequence for human lysyl oxidase was used to screen, by Southern blot analysis, genomic DNA from circulating lymphocytes obtained from unrelated, apparently normal individuals. A heritable restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) within a PstI restriction site was detected in 36% of individuals screened (a total of 72 chromosomes were analyzed). The major allele was represented as a 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF