BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Although thromboembolic stroke is caused by red, white, or mixed clots, the emboli previously used in animal studies on thrombolysis were more often red than white. Because this might be one of the reasons why thrombolysis is less effective in patients than in experimental stroke, we developed a new method of preparing highly standardized red and fibrin-rich white emboli....

Fifteen dogs were studied by perfusion scan, angioscopy and autopsy. In 10, emboli were formed in leg veins and released before study; five dogs were not embolized and served as controls. In controls, angioscopy disclosed no emboli, perfusion scans were normal after angioscopy and autopsy disclosed no emboli. Among the embolized dogs, 23 emboli were identified at autopsy. Perfusion scans disclo...

BACKGROUND The vascular depression hypothesis and our recent findings of increased frequency of spontaneous cerebral emboli in dementia suggest that such emboli may be involved in the causation of depressive symptoms in dementia. AIMS To evaluate the association between spontaneous cerebral emboli and depressive symptoms in Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia. METHOD In a cohort of 14...

Raised internal pressure in a distressed submarine rapidly increases the risk of decompression sickness (DCS) following submarine escape. The hypothesis that breathing a hyperoxic gas during escape may reduce the risk of DCS was tested using goats. Shallow air saturation and simulated submarine escape dives were carried out either singularly or in combination (saturation, escape, or saturation ...

Fat mobilization during cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) is a recognized risk of the procedure. Intravascular mobilization of fat emboli subsequent to CPB has been implicated in some of its recognized pathophysiologies, particularly with regard to cerebral embolic injury. The aim of this study was to investigate whether fat mobilization is still a real issue in modern perfusion practice and to dete...

BACKGROUND Thermal ablation is one of the most commonly used modalities to treat central airway obstruction. Both laser and argon plasma coagulation (APC) have been reported to cause gas emboli and cardiac arrest. We sought to determine whether bronchoscopic ablation therapy can result in systemic gas emboli, correlate their presence with the rate of gas flow, and establish whether a zero-flow ...

We read with interest the article by Jones and colleagues entitled “How Effective are Cardiopulmonary Bypass Circuits at Removing Gaseous Microemboli” (1). Their invariable detection of gaseous microemboli (GME) distal to the cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) arterial line filter after entrainment of air to the venous line is in complete agreement with our original report of the same phenomenon (2)....

The occurrence of pulmonary emboli in 617 patients admitted to a respiratory intensive care unit was studied. Pulmonary emboli were found in 18 (27 percent) of 66 autopsies. Half of these pulmonary emboli were not diagnosed before death, despite persistent aggressive attempts to document pulmonary emboli. In this subpopulation of patients with respiratory failure, the usual clinical manifestati...

OBJECTIVE When the right atrium (RA) cannula is connected to the venous return line of the cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) circuit, air is often introduced. Air in the venous cannula may increase cerebral air embolization at initiation of CPB despite the arterial line filter. We measured the volume of air present in the venous cannula after cannulation of the RA. Transcranial Doppler quantified em...