View clinical trials related to Thoracic Surgery.
Filter by:Neurological complications from cardiac surgery are an important source of operative mortality, prolonged hospitalization, health care expenditure, and impaired quality of life. New strategies of care are needed to avoid rising complications for the growing number of aged patients undergoing cardiac surgery. This study will evaluate novel methods for reducing brain injury during surgery from inadequate brain blood flow using techniques that could be widely employed.
Fast track programs, multimodal therapy strategies, have been introduced in many surgical fields to minimize postoperative morbidity and mortality. This study is intended to evaluate a rehabilitation program in comparison with a historical series.
Following lung surgery air may continue to leak from the surface of the lung. Chest drains are placed to allow this air to be removed safely and prevent the lung from collapsing. Drains need to remain until the air leak from the lung has ceased. Air which continues to leak results in longer chest drainage times which cause increased discomfort and immobility for patients. These patients are at risk of secondary complications such as infection. Longer hospital stays and increased costs ensue. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) conducted at The Royal Brompton Hospital has shown clear benefits in the management of difficult air leak with the use of BioGlue. BioGlue is a surgical sealant applied to the surface of the lung at the time of surgery. BioGlue is of bovine origin. Concerns exist regarding the potential risk of transmission of blood borne diseases with bovine derived medical products. Should a surgical adhesive without these potential risks prove as effective as BioGlue then its use could be commended. The Vivostat System is a medical system that derives a sealant from the patient's own blood. A small study has shown that it may also be of benefit in the management of difficult air leaks. The principal aim of our RCT is to compare the duration of air leak, length of chest drainage and hospital stay associated with BioGlue to that of Vivostat.
Primary Objective: The primary objective of the study is to characterize and measure the impact of major surgery on the kinetics of endothelial function during the perioperative period. Reactive hyperemia, characterized by Digital Thermal Monitoring (DTM), will be utilized to characterize this during the perioperative period in patients undergoing major abdominal or thoracic surgery. This will attempt to characterize the relationship between impaired endothelial function, the extent of surgical insult, and the risk for adverse postoperative outcome. Secondary Objectives: Secondary objectives of this study will evaluate the following: - The incidence of major complications in correlation to reduced preoperative reactive hyperemia - The incidence of major complications in correlation to reduced postoperative reactive hyperemia (calculated as absolute value and as the change from baseline [delta]). - It is anticipated that two factors (namely, preoperative cardiovascular risk and the extent of the intraoperative inflammatory response) will predominantly contribute to the impaired microcirculatory/hyperemic/endothelial function and should therefore be accounted for in this study. The correlation between impaired reactive hyperemia and these two contributory factors will be evaluated. 1. Preoperative cardiovascular risk will be assessed using risk scoring systems that attempt to infer patient risk according to preoperative co-morbidities, namely The ASA Physical Status Classification System24, The Lee Modified Cardiac Risk Index,25 and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Modifiers to the Lee Modified Cardiac Risk Index (an unvalidated scoring system that considers factors unique to the cancer surgical population), and The Metabolic Syndrome. The latter represents a larger at-risk patient population who has yet to develop symptomatic cardiac lesions (and therefore will not be identified by the Lee modified Cardiac Risk Index). 2. Intraoperative inflammatory response will be assessed using quantitative assays for C-RP, and cytokines. - Multivariate analysis will analyze for intraoperative perturbations—including hemodynamic (heart rate, blood pressure), temperature, and fluid shifts (blood loss, transfusions.
This study will compare atorvastatin (Lipitor) with a placebo (inactive pill) to see if this drug reduces heart rhythm abnormalities (arrhythmias) or lung inflammation after thoracic surgery. Preliminary results suggest that cholesterol lowering drugs (statins) may reduce problems after surgery such as arrhythmias or lung inflammation which may be serious. This study will be randomized and double blind, meaning that patients are placed in groups purely by chance, like flipping a coin. Neither the patient or doctor will know which group the patient is in.
Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a medical condition that is due to left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD). LVSD is a decreased ability of the heart to pump blood forward. There are 5 million people in the United States that have CHF and 52,828 new cases are diagnosed annually. There are 995,000 hospital visits and 52,828 deaths annually due to CHF. Previous studies have shown that people with this condition are at a higher risk for complications immediately after any type of heart surgery than are normal individuals. This includes increased dependence on medications and devices to improve the pumping function of the heart and blood pressure. Additionally, they also have longer lengths of hospital stay and higher rates of death compared to normal individuals. Some patients with LVSD not only have a decreased pumping ability of the heart, they also have an inefficient pumping function. These patients have been shown to benefit from a device therapy known as biventricular pacing. Biventricular pacing involves simultaneously electrically stimulating the two major pumping chambers of the heart known as ventricles using a pacemaker and wires. This causes a more coordinated contraction of the heart chambers resulting in improvement in the pumping ability of the heart and blood pressure. Studies have confirmed that in these patients, implantation of a biventricular pacemaker improves patients' symptoms and quality of life as well as decreasing a need for future hospitalizations. Whether biventricular pacing in patients with LVSD improves patient outcomes after heart surgery has not been investigated. Some patients temporarily develop slow heart rates after cardiovascular surgery. These slow heart rates can cause a decrease in the blood pumped from the heart and result in low blood pressures. Therefore, all patients undergoing cardiovascular surgery, regardless of left ventricular function, receive temporary pacing wires that are placed on one of the ventricles during the surgery. Temporary pacing will result in an increase in heart rate and improvement in the amount of blood pumped by the heart and in blood pressure. The placement of these wires is precautionary as only a few patients need to be paced for slow heart rates. Once patients are felt to no longer require them, the wires are easily removed. The purpose of this study is to determine whether biventricular pacing immediately after heart surgery in patients with LVSD will improve in-hospital outcomes. Patients that are scheduled for heart surgery and meet the inclusion criteria will be approached for consent to participate in this study. Once consented, they will be randomized to one of three treatment arms: usual care, RV pacing (single ventricle pacing), or biventricular pacing. Randomization is a process similar to picking numbers out of a hat. The patients will then undergo surgery as scheduled. During the surgery, the patients will receive the temporary pacing wires on both ventricles instead of one. Immediately after surgery, the patients will receive either usual care, RV pacing, or biventricular pacing depending upon the treatment arm that they were randomized to. The pacing wires will be removed as soon as the patients become stable as per routine. The clinical, operative, and in-hospital characteristics of these patients will be recorded on specialized forms. The characteristics of those that received biventricular pacing will be compared to those that had RV or no pacing to see whether there was any benefit to this mode of therapy.
Effect of two preoperative oral immune-enhancing nutritional supplements in patients at high risk of infection after cardiac surgery: a randomized placebo-controlled study. Introduction: In our first study we showed that the use of a preoperative oral immune-enhancing nutritional supplement (OIENS) resulted in an improved patients’ host-defence with a reduction in postoperative infectious morbidity in ‘high-risk’ cardiac surgery patients. The use of the OIENS resulted also in less postoperative organ dysfunction. Experimental studies have shown that additional glycine results in less ischemia-reperfusion damage and that glycine has anti-inflammatory properties. Objective: The use of an OIENS in the preoperative period in patients at high risk of infection after elective cardiac surgery with the use of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) results in a reduction in infections as in our first study. The addition of 9.6 gram glycine per sachet OIENS results in a further reduction in postoperative dysfunction. Design: A prospective randomized placebo controlled study with two oral immune enhancing nutritional formula’s and an isocaloric control formula. Patients: Seventy-four consecutive patients undergoing cardiac surgery with the use of an CPB who met one or more of the following inclusion criteria: Age 70 years or older, mitral valve replacement or cardiac ejection fraction less then 40%. Exclusion criteria were age < 18 years, proven malignancy, use of corticosteroids, severe renal and liver failure. Definition of a protocol violation was the intake of less then 5 L or more then 10 L of the nutritional supplement in the preoperative period. Intervention: Patients were split up in three groups by concealed randomisation. One group received the arginine, omega3-PUFAs and nucleotides enriched formula (OIENS). Another group received the OIENS further enriched with glycine (OIENS+glyc). The control group received an isocaloric nutritional supplement without the enrichments.
The purpose of this study is to determine if a difference exists in the inflammatory response which occurs related to coronary artery bypass graft (CABG)surgery performed on cardiopulmonary bypass as compared to CABG surgery performed off bypass at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.