What is autologous platelet isolation technology?

On October 18, 2014 our cardiovascular surgery team completed another aortic total arch replacement surgery and successfully treated a 38-year-old male aortic coarctation patient with a new technique, autologous platelet isolation, which was activated during the surgery, improving the safety of the patient’s surgery and at the same time, under the tight blood supply in the city greatly reduced the blood used for surgery. With the increasing incidence of cardiovascular diseases, the incidence of acute aortic coarctation has also increased, and the incidence of the population is also showing a younger trend. These diseases are very dangerous, and once they rupture, the success rate of resuscitation is almost zero, and surgery is the only treatment option. However, this type of surgery is difficult and time-consuming, and the destruction of blood cells during surgery is severe, resulting in a high rate of surgical death, making it the most complex and difficult procedure in cardiovascular surgery today. In order to correct the coagulation disorders and bleeding caused by prolonged surgery, a large amount of blood transfusion is often required, and the current tight blood supply in the city has restricted the development of such surgery into a bottleneck. In this operation, our cardiac surgery department applied a new technique – autologous platelet isolation, commonly known as “hematopoiesis”. Platelet-rich plasma is isolated from the patient’s whole blood before the start of extracorporeal circulation and preserved for postoperative transfusion to protect both the quantity and function of platelets, which can effectively reduce the amount of blood products, and also play a role in intraoperative hemostasis and promote wound healing. Since the establishment of our cardiac surgery department in February 2013, a total of 15 arterial coarctation surgeries have been performed, including 4 cases of total arch replacement + elephant trunk stenting, 2 cases of Bentall surgery, 3 cases of ascending aortic prosthesis replacement, and 6 cases of descending aortic stenting. The success of this surgery not only saved a young life, but also opened a new chapter in the field of cardiac macrovascular surgery in our hospital.