takagi yasushi

We report wound management using a vacuum-assisted closure (VAC) system for the cannula sites of extracorporeal biventricular assist devices (BiVADs) for 295 days in a 23-year old Chinese female patient with fulminant giant cell myocarditis, who finally underwent heart transplantation. When the cannula sites appeared necrotic 3 months after BiVADs placement, she received negative pressure wound therapy prophylactically for four cannula sites, using a VAC system for 3 months, followed by no infections. Such prophylactic VAC therapy, using the skin barrier paste usually used for the ostomy pouching system to create a flatter surface and airtightness, may be useful to avoid cannula site infections, which is still a fatal complication causing sepsis, especially in patients with extracorporeal BiVADs.

BACKGROUND: Transit-time flow measurement (TTFM) is frequently used for intraoperative graft flow analysis during coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Although the TTFM results may be influenced by fractional flow reserve (FFR) of the target coronary artery as a determinant of coronary lesion-specific ischemia, the data has been limited. METHODS: We retrospectively investigated the relationships between the intraoperative TTFM parameters and preoperative FFR values of the target coronary arteries in 40 in-situ left internal thoracic artery (LITA) grafts to the left anterior descending artery (LAD), which were revealed to be patent on postoperative computed tomography angiography. RESULTS: The Spearman correlation coefficients of the TTFM parameters with FFR were as follows; maximum flow: -0.12 (p = 0.301), minimum flow (Qmin): -0.43 (p = 0.004), mean flow (Qm): -0.30 (p = 0.036), pulsatility index (PI): 0.37 (p = 0.012), diastolic filling (DF): -0.36 (p = 0.012), percent insufficiency (%Insuf): 0.45 (p = 0.002), and fast Fourier transform (FFT) ratio: -0.07 (p = 0.329). While Min and Qm showed significant negative correlation, PI and %Insuf showed significant positive correlation with FFR. CONCLUSIONS: Most TTFM parameters, including Qm, of the LITA graft to the LAD during CABG are strongly affected by preoperative FFR values. Since the FFT ratio is not influenced by FFR, FFT analysis of the TTFM may be recommend in the case of the in-situ LITA graft to the LAD with moderate stenosis with a higher FFR＞0.75.