Introduction
Conventional blood cardioplegia is given intermittently every 15-20 min.
Therefore, several doses of cardioplegia are usually required and the
number of cardioplegia doses rises with increasing complexity of the
procedure. A novel single dose blood cardioplegia that can provide an
extended period of safe myocardial ischemic arrest was developed by
Matte and del Nido and was initially employed in pediatric cardiac
surgery.1 Presently, del Nido Cardioplegia (DNC) is
routinely used in pediatric cardiac surgery with excellent
outcomes2-4
Several studies confirmed the safety of DNC in selected adult cardiac
surgery procedures.5-13 However, these studies
included mostly selected and relatively simple adult cardiac surgery
procedures such as first time CABG or single valve surgery. Indeed,
studies on routine use of DNC for all categories of adult cardiac
surgery including more complex procedures with intermediate or high risk
profile patients are limited.14, 15
Our purpose was to bridge this gap in knowledge by comparing routine use
of DNC with conventional multi-dose BC in all categories of adult
cardiac surgery procedures with a wide range of procedure’s complexity
and patient’s risk profile. Our hypothesis was that DNC is potentially
safe in all comers.