| Abstract: | Acute purulent mediastinitis (APM) is one of the most complicated forms of surgical infection, showing a high incidence of sepsis--from 45 to 100%, mortality rates of 17 to 80%. Sixty-eight patients with APM admitted to the N. V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute of Emergency Care in October 2002 to March 2007 were examined. Postoperatively, all the patients received extracorporeal hemocorrection techniques (EHT): plasmapheresis (PA) via filtration and continuous venovenous hemofiltration (CVVHF). According to the time of initiation of EHT, the patients were divided into 2 groups: 1) 34 patients in whom EHT was initiated within the first 24 hours after surgery; 2) 34 patients in whom it was started on postoperative day 2. The efficiency of early use of EHT in the complex therapy of APM was evaluated. The early initiation of EHT (PA and CVVHF) caused a reduction in endogenous intoxication and the magnitude of a systemic inflammatory reaction, which resulted in the rapidest restoration of the size of major populations and subpopulations of lymphocytes and prevented the development of immune system incompetence. The early use of EHT caused a significant reduction in hospital mortality (11.8 and 35.3% in the early and late EHT use groups, respectively). |
