Successful Recovery of Cardiac Function Following 20 min of a No-touch Period in a Donation After Circulatory Death: A Case Report.

Background: Withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy (WLST) performed in the circulatory determination of death (DCD) donors leads to cardiac arrest, challenging the utilization of the myocardium for transplantation. The rapid initiation of normothermic regional perfusion or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation after death helps to optimize organs before implantation. However, additional strategies to mitigate the effects of stress response during WLST, hypoxic/ischemic injury, and reperfusion injury are required to allow myocardium recovery.

The role of side stream dark field microvasculature imaging in a rare case of vancomycin-resistant enterococcal endocarditis complicated by heparin-induced thrombocytopenia.

Sidestream dark field (SDF) imaging allows direct visualization of microvascular architecture and function. We examine the role of an SDF imaging device in visualizing the sub-lingual microvasculature as a surrogate for splanchnic microperfusion. We demonstrate good correlation between current monitoring techniques and the SDF imaging device in a rare case of vancomycin-resistant enterococcal (VRE) sepsis along with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT).