• Overall early mortality for cardiac surgery is low at 2–3% but in high risk patients it can be high as 10–15%• The demography of cardiac surgical patients is changing to older and sicker patients• Myocardial ischaemia-reperfusion injury and the systemic inflammatory response are closely related• Several pharmacological agents that have been demon-strated to confer cardioprotection in the experimental setting have been applied to the clinical setting of cardiac surgery. However, the transfer of these findings from the bench to the bedside has been largely disappointing• Potential cardioprotective strategies include pharma-cological agents such as adenosine, and mechanical interventional strategies such as acute normovolaemic haemodilution and remote ischaemic preconditioning.
The use of controlled reperfusion strategies in cardiac surgery to minimize ischaemia/reperfusion damage