Pulmonary thromboembolectomy for acute pulmonary thromboembolism.

Background: Acute pulmonary thromboembolism is fatal because of abruptly occurring hypoxemia and right ventricular failure. There are several treatment modalities, including anticoagulation, thrombolytics, ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenator), and thromboembolectomy, for managing acute pulmonary thromboembolism.

Materials And Methods: Medical records from January 1999 to December 2004 at our institution were retrospectively reviewed for pulmonary thromboembolectomy.

Amiodarone induces apoptosis in L-132 human lung epithelial cell line.

To investigate whether amiodarone induces apoptosis in cells of the L-132 human lung epithelial cell line, 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling assay, 4,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole staining, DNA fragmentation assay, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, and casapse-3 enzyme assay were performed. Through morphological and biochemical analyses, it was demonstrated that L-132 cells treated with amiodarone exhibit several features of apoptosis. In addition, it was shown that amiodarone increases the mRNA levels of bax and caspase-3.