The Annals of thoracic surgery
-
Severe ischemia-reperfusion (IR) injury leads to primary graft dysfunction after lung transplantation. Adenosine receptors modulate inflammation after IR, and the adenosine A3 receptor (A3R) is expressed in lung tissue and inflammatory cells. This study tests the hypothesis that A3R agonism attenuates lung IR injury by a neutrophil-dependent mechanism. ⋯ Exogenous activation of A3R by Cl-IB-MECA attenuates lung dysfunction, inflammation, and neutrophil infiltration after IR in wild-type but not A3R-/- mice. Results with isolated neutrophils suggest that the protective effects of Cl-IB-MECA are due, in part, to the prevention of neutrophil activation and chemotaxis. The use of A3R agonists may be a novel therapeutic strategy to prevent lung IR injury and primary graft dysfunction after transplantation.
-
The SynCardia temporary total artificial heart (t-TAH) provides complete circulatory support by replacing both native cardiac ventricles and all cardiac valves. ⋯ The SynCardia t-TAH provided acceptable survival to transplantation rates with a remarkably low incidence of neurologic events. Posttransplant survival was similar to that of patients undergoing primary heart transplantation in France.
-
Results of bilobectomy for non-small cell lung cancer have rarely been studied. ⋯ Bilobectomy can be performed with low mortality, acceptable morbidity and long term survival in accordance with TNM staging.
-
The objective was to compare long-term survival after operations for active infective endocarditis (IE) in native or prosthetic valves. We also investigated differences in early death and postoperative complications. ⋯ We found no significant difference in long-term survival between patients who underwent operations for prosthetic valve IE compared with native valve IE. Early death and morbidity were also similar between the groups. These results are promising because an increasing amount of patients with IE have prosthetic valve infections.