Abstract
Infection is one of the major complications in artificial heart, which has become to be used as a bridging device to transplantation. Therefore, the immunological state of patients should be fully understood. In this research the frequency of lymphocyte subsets was evaluated for 4 LVAD patients and 4 control patients with A-C bypass, by two-color immunofluorescence flow cytomery using monoclonal antibodies. There is no clear difference in the most lynphocyte subsets, except Ia presenting macrophage. The frequency of Ia presenting macrophage for control patients gradually increased during 28 post operative days, but that for LVAD patients was kept constant throughout the observations. These results indicate that LVAD dose not greatly affect host defense of patients.
