There is increasing concern about the safety of homologous blood transfusion during cardiac surgery, and a restrictive transfusion practice is associated with improved outcome.
When liberally applied, BIMA grafting ameliorates both the increased perioperative mortality in female patients and the reduced long-term survival of male patients.
Neuromonitoring with the techniques currently used will neither help our understanding of the altered neonatal pathophysiology, nor enable early detection of deviation from the norm. The modalities lack specificity and are not related to clinical (long-term) outcome or prognosis. Accordingly, we were unable to draw up a monitoring guideline.
