Perioperative Tracking of Intravenous Iron in Patients Undergoing On-Pump Cardiac Surgery: A Prospective, Single-Center Pilot Trial.

Background: Preoperative intravenous iron administration is a frequently used patient blood management procedure. If the timeframe of intravenous iron administration before surgery is short, (1) the concentration of the intravenous iron compound might still be high in patients' plasma when undergoing surgery and (2) this iron in patients' plasma is at risk to be lost due to blood loss. The aim of the current study was, therefore, to track the iron compound ferric carboxymaltose (FCM) before, during, and after cardiac surgery requiring cardiopulmonary bypass, with an emphasis on intraoperative iron losses in shed blood and potential recovery through autologous cell salvage.

Fast and automated monitoring of gadolinium-based contrast agents in surface waters.

Gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) are frequently used for magnetic resonance imaging to improve image contrast. These inert complexes are excreted unmetabolized from the human body and pass through wastewater treatment plants almost unaffected, leading to a significant release of anthropogenic Gd into the environment. However, long-term ecotoxicological effects of GBCAs are mainly unknown and thus powerful methods of speciation analysis are required to monitor their distribution and fate in aquatic systems.

A fast and automated separation and quantification method for bromine speciation analyzing bromide and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine in enzymatically digested DNA samples via ion chromatography-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry.

A fast and automated separation and quantification method for bromide and the artificial nucleoside 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (5-BrdU) via hyphenation of ion exchange chromatography (IC) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is presented. The analysis of these two species is relevant to monitor the transfer of electrons along metal-mediated DNA base pairs. Charge transfer in DNA is of high interest for the implementation in nanotechnological applications like molecular wires.

Automated Chiral Analysis of Amino Acids Based on Chiral Derivatization and Trapped Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry.

A fast and fully automated method for chiral analysis has been developed by combining a chiral derivatization approach with high-resolution trapped ion mobility separation. Although the presented approach can be potentially applied to diverse types of chiral compounds, several benchmark amino acids were used as model compounds, focusing on the smallest amino acid alanine. An autosampler with an integrated chromatography system was used for inline chiral derivatization with ()-naproxen chloride and subsequent preseparation.

LC-ICP-MS method for the determination of "extractable copper" in serum.

Copper is an essential element for biological functions within humans and animals. There are several known diseases associated with Cu deficiency or overload, such as Menkes disease and Wilson disease, respectively. A common clinical method for determining extractable Cu levels in serum, which is thought to be potentially dangerous if in excess, is to subtract the value of tightly incorporated Cu in ceruloplasmin from total serum Cu.