Carbon monoxide improves cardiac energetics and safeguards the heart during reperfusion after cardiopulmonary bypass in pigs
Ischemia-reperfusion injury, a clinical problem during cardiac surgery, involves worsened adenosine trisphosphate (ATP) generation and damage to the heart. We studied carbon monoxide ( CO) pretreatment, proven valuable in rodents but not previously tested in large animals, for its effects on pig hearts subjected to cardiopulmonary bypass with cardioplegic arrest. Hearts of CO-treated pigs showed significantly higher ATP and phosphocreatine levels, less interstitial edema, and apoptosis of cardiomyocytes and required fewer defibrillations after bypass. We conclude that treatment with CO improves the energy status, prevents edema formation and apoptosis, and facilitates recovery in a clinical…
Lithotripsy of Calcified Aortic Valve Leaflets by a Novel Ultrasound Transcatheter-Based Device
The increasing incidence of calcific aortic valve disease necessitates the elaboration of new strategies to retard the progression of the pathology with an innovative solution. While the increasing diffusion of the transcatheter aortic valve replacements (TAVRs) allows a mini-invasive approach to aortic valve substitution as an alternative to conventional surgical replacement (SAVR) in an always larger patient population, TAVR implantation still has contraindications for young patients. In addition, it is liable to undergo calcification with the consequent necessity of re-intervention with conventional valve surgery or repeated implantation in the so-called TAVR-in-TAVR procedure. Inspired …
Efficiency of transgenesis using sperm-mediated gene transfer: generation of hDAF transgenic pigs.
SINCE the beginning of this century, replacement of failing human organs with their animal counterparts has been an interesting topic of debate for writers and scientists. In the 1960s, prolonged survival after kidney transplantation from chimpanzee to human was obtained in the United States and Europe. Nevertheless, both the progressive improvement in surgical technique and in immunosuppressant therapy and the availability of cadaveric organs and living donation have reduced the interest in xenotransplantation. Because of the increasing requests for organs and the lack of donors to meet that need, xenotransplantation has become a reliable option again for temporary organ replacement (eg, o…