Interactive cardiovascular and thoracic surgery
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Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg · May 2014
Review Meta AnalysisA meta-analysis of adjusted risk estimates for survival from observational studies of complete versus incomplete revascularization in patients with multivessel disease undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting.
To determine whether coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with complete revascularization improves survival in patients with multivessel disease (MVD) over CABG with incomplete revascularization, we performed a meta-analysis of adjusted (but not unadjusted) risk estimates from observational studies. Databases including MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched through October 2013 using Web-based search engines (PubMed, OVID). Eligible studies were observational studies of complete- versus incomplete-revascularization CABG enrolling ≥ 100 patients with MVD in each treatment arm and reporting an adjusted hazard ratio for follow-up mortality. ⋯ A pooled analysis demonstrated a statistically significant 37% reduction in follow-up mortality with complete- relative to incomplete-revascularization CABG (hazard ratio, 0.63; 95% confidence interval, 0.53-0.75; P < 0.00001). Although meta-regression coefficients were not statistically significant for mean follow-up duration and age and proportion of men and patients undergoing off-pump CABG, that for proportion of patients with diabetes was significantly negative (P = 0.03), which would indicate that as patients with diabetes increase, complete-revascularization CABG is more beneficial for survival. In conclusion, complete-revascularization CABG appears to improve survival over incomplete-revascularization CABG in patients with MVD.
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Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg · May 2014
Prospective validation of EuroSCORE II in patients undergoing cardiac surgery in Argentinean centres.
The European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation II (EuroSCORE II) is an updated version of the original EuroSCORE that must be extensively validated. The objective was to prospectively evaluate the efficacy of EuroSCORE II in predicting the immediate results of cardiac surgery in Argentinean centres. ⋯ EuroSCORE II reflects a better current surgical performance and offers a new quality standard to evaluate local outcomes. EuroSCORE showed an overall good discriminative capacity and calibration in this local population; nevertheless, the model performed optimally in non-CABG surgery and in highest-risk patients, underestimating in-hospital mortality in lowest-risk cases. The latter finding may be interpreted as an inadequate behaviour of the model, as a poor performance of surgeons or both. Larger prospective studies will elucidate this hypothesis.
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Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg · May 2014
Comment Case ReportsIntraoperative management of failed single lung ventilation using a Fogarty balloon catheter through the open bronchus during off-pump left lung transplantation.
The use of balloon catheters as an interventional procedure is well established in various fields of medicine. Failure of single lung ventilation (SLV) can add difficulty to open bronchus procedures, and could result in a life-threatening situation very quickly. Trying to achieve single lung ventilation by alternate methods is fraught with dangers, and use of urgent cardiopulmonary bypass is less desirable because of increased primary graft dysfunction and mortality. We describe a novel approach of using a Fogarty balloon catheter through the open bronchus to achieve SLV during off-pump left lung transplantation when conventional SLV failed.
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Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg · May 2014
Safety considerations during transapical aortic valve implantation.
Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is a new method for the treatment of very high-risk patients with aortic valve stenosis. The radiation dose to which the patient and each member of the heart team are exposed during this new fluoroscopically guided intervention is unknown. ⋯ During a TA-TAVI procedure, the patients receive a higher X-ray dose than during coronary angiography with intervention. After 100 TAVI procedures, the members of the heart team sustain a comparable dose of ionizing radiation to the annual dose received by a busy interventional cardiologist. Therefore, maximal safety and optimal X-ray protection for patients and the members of the team are crucial and should be redefined.