C ardiac arrest remains a major clinical and public health problem.1 Studies of cardiac arrest in volving patients admitted to non-critical care beds showed that survival has not improved despite 40 years of medical advances.2−4 Outside of critical care units, survival was substantially lower for nonwitnessed arrests than for witnessed arrests; for cardiac than for respiratory arrests; for arrests due to asystole or pulseless electrical activity than for those due to ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia; and for arrests occurring early in the morning than for those at other times of the day.2-4 How these data apply to approximately one-third of in-hospital cardiac arrests that occur in intensive care units (ICUs) is less clear.Arrests in ICUs might be expected to have increased survival because universal cardiac monitoring and a high nurse-to-patient ratio would mean that the arrests would be witnessed regardless of the time of day. On the other hand, survival might be expected to be lower because critical care patients have a high disease burden and experience arrests despite aggressive preemptive life support. Also, patients in a general ICU might be expected to have poorer survival than those in a coronary care or cardiovascular surgical ICU because they typically have primary noncardiac diagnoses; therefore, cardiac arrest in these patients implies cardiovascular collapse in addition to noncardiac illness (i.e., at least two-organ failure). 3,4 We evaluated survival outcomes during a five-year follow-up period among adult patients who experienced cardiac or respiratory arrest in ICUs at four hospitals. We also identified risk factors associated with decreased survival after 24 hours.

No abstract

Intraoperative glutaraldehyde treatment of allograft tissue used in hypoplastic left heart syndrome repair prevents the profound immunologic sensitization that occurs in the majority of infants undergoing surgical palliation. In patients requiring subsequent heart transplantation, this decreases the risk of antibody-mediated rejection and increases the likelihood of finding a suitable donor, thus improving access to transplantation.

No abstract

Background. The impact of opioid use in lung transplant candidates on posttransplant outcomes is unknown. Studies on opioid therapy in kidney and liver transplant candidates have suggested increased risk of graft failure or death. We sought to analyze the relationship between pretransplant opioid use in lung transplant candidates and retransplant-free survival. Methods. We retrospectively reviewed adult patients transplanted consecutively between November 2004 and August 2015. The exposure was any opioid use at time of transplant listing and primary outcome was retransplant-free survival, analyzed via Cox regression model adjusted for recipient age, gender, ethnicity, diagnosis, and bridging status. Secondary outcomes included duration of ventilation, intensive care unit and hospital length of stay, 3-month and 1-year survival, continuing opioid use at 1 year, and time to onset of chronic lung allograft dysfunction. Results. The prevalence of opioid use at time of listing was 14% (61/425). Median daily oral morphine equivalent dose was 31 mg (18–54). Recipient ethnicity was associated with pretransplant opioid use. Opioid use at time of listing did not increase risk of death or retransplantation in an adjusted model (hazard ratio 1.12 [95% confidence interval 0.65-1.83], P = 0.6570). Secondary outcomes were similar between groups except hospital length of stay (opioid users 35 versus nonusers 27 d, P = 0.014). Continued opioid use at 1-year posttransplant was common (27/56, 48%). Conclusions. Pretransplant opioid use was not associated with retransplant-free survival in our cohort and should not necessarily preclude listing. Further work stratifying opioid use by indication and the association with opioid use disorder would be worthwhile.