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Journal and News Scan
September 27, 2019
Submitted by: Aristotle Protopapas
Interesting to see the long term curative results of this randomized controlled trial.
September 27, 2019
Submitted by: Emily Robinson
Patients undergoing elective or urgent cardiac surgery who were anemic at the time of surgery were compared to a matched population who were not anemic. Anemia was associated with increased mortality during follow-up, but blood transfusion was not associated with mortality.
September 27, 2019
Submitted by: Emily Robinson
Open distal anastomosis in the frozen elephant trunk operation is usually performed in aortic arch zone 2 or 3. The authors compared outcomes in patients who underwent zone 2 versus 3 open distal anastomosis. They found that proximallization of the anastomosis simplifies the arch replacement, reducing the visceral ischaemia time.
September 22, 2019
Submitted by: Mark Ferguson
The authors point out that randomized trials of incentive spirometry have failed to mitigate early postoperative fevers, traditionally attributed to atelectasis. They propose that an immune response triggered by injured cells is responsible for noninfectious postoperative fevers, and that this is a natural, self-limited process that requires no intervention.
September 22, 2019
Submitted by: Mark Ferguson
Investigators reported, in abstract form, promising results of a single dose of radiotherapy, delivered with electorphysiologic guidance, for managing ventricular tachycardia. Seventy-eight percent of patients had a clinically important reduction in ventricular tachycardia episodes.
September 20, 2019
Submitted by: Mark Ferguson
Immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. In this study, breath prophiles were collected from 143 patients and a single biomarker profile was created that detected responses to anti-PD-1 treatment with 89% accuracy.
September 19, 2019
Submitted by: Mark Ferguson
Using coworker reports of unprofessional behavior as a metric, surgeons' complication rates were assessed. Compared to surgeons with no reports, the complication rate for surgeons with 1-3 reports was increased 14.3%, and that for surgeons with 4 or more reports was increased 11.9%.
September 19, 2019
Submitted by: Mark Ferguson
In this randomized trial, the authors studied the use of cerebral autoregulation monitoring to target mean arterial pressure during CPB. The outcome of interest was postopertive delirium. The incidence of delirium was 53% in the usual care group compared to 38% in the intervention group, with a reduction in the odds of delirium of 45% (p=0.04).
September 18, 2019
Submitted by: Edward Savage
This is a retrospective study in OPCAB patients comparing patients who received skeletonized versus nonskeletonized SIMA and BIMA grafts. They reported patients with any sternal wound complication including redness or minor drainage that healed naturally. There was a lower incidence of complications in the skeletonized group as well as overall lower grade of complications. These effects were more pronounced in subgroup analysis of the BIMA group, including diabetics.
September 14, 2019
Submitted by: Edward Savage
This study reports ten year outcomes of the STICH trial. Comparing CABG to medical therapy groups, the authors note that CABG reduced all cause, cardiovascular, and heart failure hospitalizations. This included time-to-first and recurrent events. This was due to fewer total cardiovascular hospitalizations, the majority due to heart failure.