Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Several studies in patients who underwent open heart surgery found that myocardial ischemic damage was reduced by potassium cardioplegia combined with lidocaine infusion. The authors evaluated the effects of potassium/lidocaine-induced cardiac standstill during conventional cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on myocardial injury and left ventricular dysfunction after resuscitation from prolonged ventricular fibrillation (VF) cardiac arrest in a pig model. ⋯ In a pig model of untreated VF cardiac arrest for 14 minutes, resuscitation with potassium/lidocaine-induced cardiac standstill during conventional CPR tended to reduce myocardial injury and decreased the severity of postresuscitation myocardial dysfunction significantly.
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The pathogenesis of burn wound progression is poorly understood. Contributing factors include continuous loss of blood perfusion, excessive inflammation, and elevated apoptosis levels in wound tissue. Macroautophagy (here referred to simply as "autophagy") is associated with many chronic diseases. The authors hypothesized that autophagy is involved in burn wound progression in a rat model of deep second-degree burn. ⋯ A reduction in autophagy and blood flow and an increase in apoptosis and inflammation were observed in burn wounds early during the course of burn injury progression. This suggests that autophagy, complemented by apoptosis, play important roles in burn progression. Enhanced autophagy in the deep dermis may be a prosurvival mechanism against ischemia and inflammation after burn injury.