Pulmonary hypertension may cause or aggravate right heart failure. IV vasodilators reduce systemic blood pressure and might thereby further impair coronary perfusion and right heart performance. In the present study of cardiac surgical patients with pulmonary hypertension, selective pulmonary vasodilation without systemic effects was induced by nebulized, inhaled vasodilators.

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Pretransplant LVAD therapy reduces an elevated PVR in heart transplant recipients, but there was no statistically significant difference in posttransplant survival in patients with PH with, or without LVAD therapy. The study revealed no differences in survival in patients regardless of the severity of the PH.

Inhalation of PGI2 for 6 h in patients after cardiac surgery is associated with impaired platelet aggregation detected by in vitro techniques, with no in vivo signs of platelet dysfunction.

Mortality for patients in cardiogenic shock is very high. Treatment with ECMO in patients with refractory cardiogenic shock can be performed with good survival especially in non-surgical patients.

In order to evaluate the value of the inspiratory to end-tidal oxygen concentration difference (Io2-E'o2) as a monitor during general anaesthesia, we studied 40 orthopaedic patients allocated randomly to four groups: anaesthesia with enflurane or isoflurane in nitrous oxide with either spontaneous or controlled ventilation. (Io2-E'o2) followed an asymptotically increasing curve because of decreasing uptake of nitrous oxide. At 1 h, (Io2-E'o2) approached the end-tidal carbon dioxide concentration (E'o2). During spontaneous ventilation, (Io2-E'o2) correlated best with E'co2. During controlled ventilation, there was a negative correlation between (Io2-E'o2) and nitrous oxide uptake rate. Changes in oxygen uptake rate were reflected in (Io2-E'o2), provided that the total ventilation volume was constant and the nitrous oxide uptake rate approached steady state conditions.