Abstract
Continuous warm blood cardioplegia has been reported as a new strategy for better myocardial preservation in adult heart surgery. There are, however, few reports on its application in congenital heart surgery. We compared 17 cases of congenital heart surgery using this new method (warm group) with clinically similar.28 cases using conventional intermittent cold cardioplegia (cold group). Blood levels of creatine kinase of MB isozyme (CK-MB) on the first postoperative day were significantly lower in the warm group than in the cold group (37.3±19 IU/l vs. 495.9±2, 089 IU/l, p<0.01), even though the duration of aortic cross clamp was not different between the two groups. The combined maximum dose of dopamine and dobutamine needed for the intraoperative and postoperative periods was also significantly lower in the warm group (2.8±2.6mcg/kg/min vs. 5.8±2.6mcg/kg/min, p<0.01). These findings suggest that continuous warm blood cardioplegia offers better myocardial preservation during congenital heart surgery. Continuous warm blood cardioplegia also offers a number of advantages, including the possibility to operate on the heart in either a beating of arrested state and to minimize the amount of lysing of adhesions caused by previcus operations.
