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.