[Pulmonary embolectomy. Clinical experience]. / L'embolectomie pulmonaire. Expérience clinique.

Between 1969 and 1984, twenty-three patients underwent an emergency pulmonary embolectomy under extracorporeal circulation in the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery. The aim of this paper is to delineate the indications of this procedure. Patients were 23 to 70 years old. Diagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism was made according to clinical signs, ECG and Chest X Ray with Swan-Ganz catheter insertion into the pulmonary artery and the help of pulmonary angiogram if time permitted. The surgical technique is briefly described. Four patients died during the immediate postoperative period and three died later. The sixteen survivors all enjoy a normal life.

Haemostasis disorders in open heart surgery with extracorporeal circulation. Importance of the platelet function and the heparin neutralization.

The main haemostasis changes observed in a screening study performed in 40 patients who underwent an open heart surgery with extracorporeal circulation (ECC) are: a significant drop in platelet count from the onset of the ECC to the third postoperative day, a decrease of platelet retention and aggregation during ECC with an 8-day persistently increased heparin-neutralizing activity in plasma but not in serum, a moderate decrease of plasma factors I, II, VII-X, X and XIII and a more important drop in factor V which disappears 24 h after ECC, a transitory increase of fibrinolysis during ECC and the lack of FDP elevation in the serum. These disorders require a very good neutralization of the heparin used during ECC. The ratio protamine/heparin can be established by a titration clotting time test. Protamine chloride seems to be more efficacious and to act more quickly than protamine sulfate for the neutralization. An overload in protamine can enhance the hemostatic, biological and clinical disorders. The preventive administration of platelet concentrate immediately after the heparin neutralization contributes to reduce the bleeding disorders related to the quantitative and qualitative platelet defects.