Study of Perioperative Evolution of Right Heart Dysfunction and Preload Responsiveness in Open Heart Cardiac Surgery

The aim of the study was to assess the ability a Lung Recruitment Maneuver (LRM) with a stepwise increase of PEEP to predict fluid responsiveness and right cardiac dysfunction in mechanically ventilated patients in open heart cardiac surgery. During different phases, all patients received a Passive Leg Raising (PLR) maneuver for preload status evaluation using the PICCO system, a Lung Recruitment Maneuver (LRM) and an echographic evaluation of the right cardiac function. 20 patients were analyzed. Incomplete Lung Recruitment Maneuver (LRM) can predict fluid responsiveness at phase 1, pre-operatively, with a sensitivity of 0.57 and specificity of 0.62. Performance of an incomplete Magnetic Resonance Angiography (MRA) to predict right cardiac dysfunction based on TAPSE post-operatively provides a sensitivity and specificity of respectively 0.33 and 0.17 Tolerance to a stepwise lung recruitment maneuver can not be used to evaluate reliably the preload responsiveness and guide fluid therapy except pre-operatively. The use of a lung recruitment maneuver can be a promising method for right cardiac dysfunction screening but further studies need to be done with different echographic tools for right cardiac dysfunction evaluation.