Renal expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase after cpb in rat

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Acute renal failure is one of the major complications of cardiac surgery and CPB, occurring in approximately 5% of patients. Postoperative renal dysfunction increases the risk of mortality more than 20 fold, and triples the hospitalization costs. Although the mechanism is not clear, lower hematocrit and urine pO2 level are predictive of renal injury, suggesting that reduced oxygen delivery may be important. Hypoxia is known to cause changes in expression of a number of genes, including NOS (nitric oxide synthase) and VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor). The purpose of this study was to determine if CPB results in hypoxic gene expression in the kidney.