Aprotinin does not increase the risk of renal failure in cardiac surgery patients.

Background: Aprotinin is frequently used in high-risk cardiac surgery patients to decrease bleeding complications and transfusions of packed red blood cells (PRBC). Transfusions of PRBC are known to directly increase the risk of new onset postoperative renal failure (ARF) in cardiac surgery patients. A recent highly publicized report implicated aprotinin as an independent causal factor for postoperative renal failure, but ignored the potential confounding affect of numerical PRBC data on ARF.

Surgery for advanced colorectal cancer in elderly patients with special emphasis for radio-chemotherapy role.

Background/aims: To compare the short- and long-term outcome of older and younger patients with advanced colorectal cancer who underwent elective surgery.

Methodology: Six hundred and ninety-two patients were analyzed. Four hundred and seventy-nine patients were < 70 years (group 1), and 213 were > or = 70 years (group 2).

Aborted off-pump coronary artery bypass patients have much worse outcomes than on-pump or successful off-pump patients.

Background: Off-pump coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery is purported to reduce perioperative mortality and morbidity compared with on-pump coronary bypass graft surgery. However, the outcomes of patients for whom an off-pump strategy must be changed to an on-pump procedure during surgery have not been extensively studied.

Methods And Results: The Merged Cardiac Registry (Health Data Research, Inc) contains 70 514 isolated CABG performed from January 1998 to March 2004 in 40 facilities.

Using tracking data to find complications that physicians miss: the case of renal failure in cardiac surgery.

Background: Health Data Research, Inc (HDR) develops, manages, and maintains clinical registries from physicians and hospitals, including the Merged Cardiac Registry. Quarterly reports indicate data that are inconsistent, out of range, or outside the norms found in other medical centers.

Case Study: In reports on cardiac surgery patients, HDR noted that for the 1992-1996 period, 3 of the 30 contributing centers experienced a significant increase in the incidence of moderate and severe renal failure.