Neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation: practice patterns and predictors of outcome in the UK.

Objective: To review the UK neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) service and identify predictors of outcome.

Design: Retrospective review of the national cohort.

Patients And Interventions: 718 neonates received ECMO for respiratory failure between 1993 and 2005.

Intracardiac impedance monitors hemodynamic deterioration in a chronic heart failure pig model.

Introduction: A large number of heart failure (HF) patients benefit from cardiac resynchronization therapy. Measurements of intrathoracic impedance (ITZ) by implantable devices correlate with intrathoracic fluid content and are used for monitoring lung edema formation in HF patients. However, intrathoracic fluid is only an indirect parameter of cardiac function.

Long-term follow-up after mitral valve replacement in childhood: poor event-free survival in the young child.

Objective: In children, mechanical mitral valve replacement may be the only option if the failing mitral valve cannot be repaired. Mandatory anticoagulation and the fixed size prosthesis are of concern in the growing child, but long-term follow-up results are lacking.

Methods: Single centre, extended retrospective study of 54 patients who underwent first mitral valve replacement between June 1982 and December 1997.

Variations in the technique of slide tracheoplasty to repair complex forms of long-segment congenital tracheal stenoses.

Slide tracheoplasty has become the preferred technique for repair of long-segment congenital tracheal stenosis with complete tracheal rings. Complex morphological subtypes require technical modifications, which we present as follows.