Pre- and post-operative care of patients undergoing open cardiac surgery.

Abstract

As considerable and widespread interest in open cardiac surgery has developed, many papers have appeared describing the various techniques and results with use of extracorporeal circulatory systems. However, the important aspects of pre and postoperative care of the open heart patients have received much less attention. This omission is indeed significant for given a group of cardiac patients with a good total body perfusion and a good surgical repair of their cardiac lesions, the difference between a very low operative risk and a higher mortality is often made by the attention given to details of management in the immediate pre and postoperative intervals. Therefore, it may be of value to others to examine suggestions based on experiences gained at the University of Minnesota Hospitals during the past five years in which period more than 700 open cardiac operations were performed.