Introduction
Coronary artery bypass is one of the most widely performed adult cardiac
surgical procedures. The most frequentlyemployed technique
involvescardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) and cardioplegic arrest of the
heart.Cardioplegia is a crucial myocardial protection technique for
patients from all age groups requiring cardiac surgery necessitating
cardiac arrest.A wide range of cardioplegia solutions is currently
available for myocardial protection in cardiac surgery. Cardioplegia
solutions broadly fall into two main types, based on the basic solutions
that comprise the contents of blood and crystalloid cardioplegia.
Blood-based cardioplegia solutions bear a close resemblance to normal
physiological oxygen transport capacity and appear to be advantageous
and involve fewer risks in terms of myocardial protection. In the early
1990s, Dr. Pedro del Nido and his team developed a solution known as
“del Nidocardioplegia”. This wasoriginally employed for pediatric
cardiac surgery, but has recently been employed in a single dose in
adult cardiac surgery. del Nidosolution (DNS) can be used in a single
dose, yielding a minimum of 90 minutes of cardiac arrest (1).
Only a few retrospective studies have investigated the use of
DNScardioplegia in coronary artery bypass in adult patients (2-4).This
randomized prospective study was therefore designed to determine the
efficacy and safety profiles of DNS compared to IWBC in CABG surgery.