The evolution of myocardial protection techniques has been both the source of milestone advancements and controversial debate in cardiac surgery. Our institution has modified a low-prime cardioplegia system (CPS) and adopted a single-dose cardioplegia solution (del Nido cardioplegia) for our congenital heart disease population. The goal of this article is to describe our CPS and outline our myo...

OBJECTIVE We previously showed that arrest with multidose infusions of high-dose (1 mmol/L) esmolol (an ultra-short-acting beta-blocker) in oxygenated Krebs-Henseleit buffer (esmolol cardioplegia) provided complete myocardial protection after 40 minutes of normothermic (37 degrees C) global ischemia in isolated rat hearts. In this study we investigated the importance of oxygenation for protecti...

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether aortic tension estimated by palpation and cardioplegia infusion line pressure provide results equivalent to those obtained with direct aortic intraluminal pressure measurement. Methods: Sixty consecutive patients who underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgeries with extracorporeal circulation were analyzed. Sanguineous cardiopleg...

Various techniques for administration of blood cardioplegia are used worldwide. In this study, the effect of warm blood cardioplegia administration with or without the use of a roller pump on perioperative myocardial injury was studied in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting using minimal extra-corporeal circuits (MECCs). Sixty-eight patients undergoing elective coronary bypass s...

PURPOSE To study the effectiveness of the continuous, blood, antegrade-retrograde cardioplegia in an experimental model of isolated heart, evaluating ventricular function. METHODS Rabbits were divided into four groups: Control--C(n=10); ischemic crystalloid cardioplegia--IC(n=10); ischemic blood cardioplegia--IB(n=10); ischemic non cardioplegia--INC(n=10). After the ischemic protocol period t...

While blood:crystalloid cardioplegia is the clinical standard for patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), it has been postulated that whole blood minicardioplegia may benefit the severely injured heart by reducing cardioplegic volume, thereby reducing myocardial edema. To test this hypothesis, we compared the cardioprotection of a popular 4:1 blood:crystalloid cardioplegia to whole bl...

We have previously reported our studies of blood cardioplegia and our delivery system for it (1, 2). Our experimental results showing blood cardioplegia to be superior to asanguineous cardioplegia were reported recently (3, 4), and we have used blood cardioplegia for the past two and a half years. Although our clinical results have been gratifying, and the whole blood cardioplegia system was de...

BACKGROUND In a prospective randomised clinical study we assessed and compared antegrade vs. combined antegrade-retrograde cardioplegia in patients who underwent elective coronary artery by pass grafting. METHODS Between March 2006 and January 2007, 87 consecutive patients were randomly divided into two groups. Group A (n=45) received antegrade cold (4 degrees C) blood cardioplegia. Besides a...