BJA Advance Access originally published online on November 18, 2005
British Journal of Anaesthesia 2006 96(1):31-35; doi:10.1093/bja/aei278
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CASE REPORT |
A case of post-reperfusion syndrome following surgery for liver trauma
1 Department of Anaesthetics and 2 Department of Transplant Surgery, King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill, London SE5 9RS, UK. 3 Department of Anaesthesia, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9WL, UK. 4 101, Heritage Banjara, Rd No 3, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad 500 034, India
* Corresponding author. E-mail: rginsburg{at}londondeanery.ac.uk
We report the case of a young trauma patient who needed tight perihepatic surgical packing to control bleeding from a ruptured liver. He developed severe cardiovascular and respiratory decompensation on removal of the surgical packs as a result of the post-reperfusion syndrome. He underwent a total hepatectomy and, 35 h later, orthotopic liver transplantation. The pathophysiology of post-reperfusion syndrome is discussed, and its importance to anaesthetists in the non-transplant setting is emphasized.