Surgery under Hemodilution

Does acute normovolemic hemodilution work in cardiac surgery?

To the Editor:—In a recent article by Höhn et al., it was concluded that acute normovolemic hemodilution (ANH) in addition to aprotinin was not beneficial in preventing allogeneic blood transfusions compared to aprotinin alone in cardiac surgery. In this randomized, controlled trial, the patients were hemodiluted to a hematocrit of 28% pre–cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). The transfusion threshold...

Hemodilution for cerebral ischemia.

If irreversible cerebral infarction from stroke occurred immediately at the time of arterial occlusion, there would be little hope of intervening therapeutically. However, even though there may be a central "core" of severe ischemia where brain tissue dies after a period of several minutes, in most situations there is a surrounding "ischemic penumbra" where blood flow is reduced enough to resul...

Hemodilution in ischemic stroke.

Hyperoxia in extreme hemodilution.

Intraoperative surgical blood loss is initially replaced by infusion of red cell-free, cristalloidal or colloidal solutions. When normovolemia is maintained the ensuing dilutional anemia is compensated by an increase of cardiac output and of arterial oxygen extraction. In the ideal case, a surgical blood loss can entirely be 'bridged' without transfusion by intraoperative normovolemic hemodilut...

Microcirculatory Networks by Hemodilution

The effect of isovolemic hemodilution on red blood cell flow distribution was studied in complete self-contained microvessel networks of the rat mesentery. Hematocrit, diameter, and length of all vessel segments as well as the topological structure were determined in control networks (systemic hematocrit, 0.54) and after hemodilution (systemic hematocrit, 0.30). Hemodilution was performed by ex...