The Del Nido Versus Cold Blood Cardioplegia in Aortic Valve Replacement

The del Nido cardioplegia was developed by Pedro del Nido and his team at the University of Pittsburgh in 1990s. It was primarily designed for children and it has been used in pediatric cardiac surgery in Boston's Children Hospital since 1994. There are few studies regarding the del Nido cardioplegia. A prospective, randomized trial was designed to determine the efficiency of the del Nido cardioplegia when compared to multidose cold blood cardioplegia in cardiac procedures with short and moderate cross-clamp times. For the analysis of two cardioprotection protocols, it is essential to compare groups equal in terms of the surgery and perioperative care, with the same surgical risk and cross-clamp time. The research required elimination of all the unnecessary variables. The patients undergoing aortic valve replacement procedure were selected as a study population. A group of 150 patients will be randomized either into del Nido cardioprotection protocol (75 participants) or into the cold blood cardioplegia protocol (75 participants). The intraoperative and perioperative outcomes of using each solution will be presented and compared (see the endpoints).