Antegrade cerebral perfusion (ACP) and retrograde cerebral perfusion (RCP) are the two major types of brain protection during aortic arch surgery. Which one is better has still been debated. By summarizing and analyzing the research progress of the comparative research of antegrade cerebral perfusion and retrograde cerebral perfusion in aortic arch surgery, we have found that there was no significant difference between ACP and RCP in terms of temporary nerve dysfunction (TND), permanent nerve dysfunction (PND), stroke, early mortality, morbidity, long-time survival, and a composite outcome of hospital death, bleeding, prolonged ventilation, need for dialysis, infection and stroke. But RCP resulted in a high incidence of prolonged mean ICU-stay and hospital-stay, longer mean extubation time as well as higher cost. And the surgeon is given more time to reconstruct the vessels of the arch since mean operative time is longer in the ACP. So we think that antegrade cerebral perfusion might be preferred as the brain protection method for complicated aortic arch procedures. If a surgeon confirms that the surgery is not very sophisticated and can be completed in a short time, it is better to choose RCP because of no catheter or cannula in the surgical field to impede the surgeon. The article aims at providing a reference to cardiac surgeries when choosing cerebral protection strategy in aortic arch surgery.
ObjectiveTo investigate the clinical efficacy of unilateral antegrade selective cerebral perfusion (UASCP) compared to bilateral antegrade selective cerebral perfusion (BASCP) in aortic surgery.MethodsPubMed, EBSCO, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CBM, CNKI, Wanfang Database were searched from establishment of each database to January 2019 to identify clinical studies on prognosis of UASCP versus BASCP in aortic surgery patients. The quality of randomized controlled trials was assessed by Cochrane risk assessement tool. The quality of non-randomized controlled trials was assessed by the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale ( NOS). Meta-analyses were presented in terms of odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) by using RevMan 5.3 software.ResultsSixteen eligible studies including 3 randomized controlled trials, 2 propensity matching score studies, and 11 retrospective case control studies including4 490 patients were identified. The 3 randomized controlled trials were with high bias risk. The NOS score of the other 13 studies was more than 6 stars. Pooled analysis showed no significant difference between the UASCP and BASCP groups in terms of permanent neurological dysfunction (PND) (OR=0.93, 95%CI 0.74 to 1.18, P=0.57), temporary neurological dysfunction (TND) (OR=1.26, 95%CI 0.94 to 1.69, P=0.12), acute kidney injury rate (OR=1.11, 95%CI 0.79 to 1.55, P=0.55), 30-day mortality (OR=0.94, 95%CI 0.67 to 1.32, P=0.72), length of ICU stay (OR=–0.64, 95%CI –1.66 to 0.37, P=0.22) and hospital stay (OR=–0.35, 95%CI –2.38 to 1.68, P=0.74).ConclusionThis meta-analysis shows that UASCP and BASCP administration do not result in different mortality and neurologic morbidity rates. However, more studies with good methodologic quality and large sample are still needed to make further assessment.