Tag Archives: CytoSorb®

Introduction Bleeding post cardiac surgery carries significant patient mortality and morbidity including resternotomy, increased hospital stays, and blood product transfusion.1,2 Bleeding is more severe in patients who are taking pre-operative antiplatelet or anticoagulation medications that have not been stopped sufficiently in advance to minimise such risks. Current guidelines across Europe recommend stopping such agents at least two to five days prior to surgery; they also recommend delaying urgent surgery so that the risk of perioperative bleeding is minimised.3 However, this is not always possible in the setting of urgent and emergency c

The technology is already used to treat inflammation in critically ill and cardiac surgery patients as an early standalone (I.e. without combined renal replacement) therapy for extracorporeal cytokine removal. It is designed to reduce the ‘cytokine storm’ or ‘cytokine release syndrome’, a major contributing factor in inflammation. The controlled study of 20 patients was conducted by a team at the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Therapy of the University Szeged in Hungary, led by Professor Zsolt Molnar. They investigated the effects of a single treatment of extracorporeal cytokine removal with CytoSorb® therapy, in additio