The Right Ventricle after Cardiopulmonary Bypass: new Insights on its Adaptive Physiology

Post cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) right ventricular (RV) dysfunction has been extensively described in cardiac surgery in past years, and attributed to either cardioplegia, myocardial hypothermia, cardiac stunning, and pericardiectomy [1,2,3]. More recently, both a different contraction pattern [4, 5] and a dissociation of RV output from RV longitudinal contraction [6] have been described in this context, leading to some re-interpretation of what previously observed.