Blood Conservation and Hemostasis in Cardiac Surgery: A Survey of Practice Variation and Adoption of Evidence-Based Guidelines.

Background: Blood conservation and hemostasis are integral parts of reducing avoidable blood transfusions and the associated morbidity and mortality. Despite the publication of blood conservation guidelines for cardiac surgery, evidence suggests persistent variability in practice patterns. Members of the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA) created a survey to audit conformance to existing guidelines and use the results to help narrow the evidence-to-practice gap.

Incidental Diagnosis of Carcinoid Disease by Intraoperative Transesophageal Echocardiography and Subsequent Discovery of a Neuroendocrine Tumor during Cardiac Surgery.

• Carcinoid heart disease typically involves the right-sided valves of the heart. • Carcinoid valves are fixed and retracted with limited mobility. • Pathognomonic appearance of valves increases carcinoid likelihood.

Analysis of an engineered plasma kallikrein inhibitor and its effect on contact activation.

Engineering of protein-protein interactions is used to enhance the affinity or specificity of proteins, such as antibodies or protease inhibitors, for their targets. However, fully diversifying all residues in a protein-protein interface is often unfeasible. Therefore, we limited our phage library for the serine protease inhibitor ecotin by restricting it to only tetranomial diversity and then targeted all 20 amino acid residues involved in protein recognition.

Active plasma kallikrein localizes to mast cells and regulates epithelial cell apoptosis, adipocyte differentiation, and stromal remodeling during mammary gland involution.

The plasminogen cascade of serine proteases directs both development and tumorigenesis in the mammary gland. Plasminogen can be activated to plasmin by urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA), tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA), and plasma kallikrein (PKal). The dominant plasminogen activator for mammary involution is PKal, a serine protease that participates in the contact activation system of blood coagulation.