Ultrafiltration in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery: An Observational Cohort Study

Infants and children undergoing cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) can experience systemic inflammation that prolongs post-operative recovery. Ultrafiltration is an intra-opreative technique that is hypothesized to extract circulating inflammatory mediators during the CPB time. There have been only a few small studies looking at a limited number of inflammatory marker profiles in this context. Our institution uses an innovative form of ultrafiltration "subzero-balance simple-modified ultrafiltration" (SBUF-SMUF) throughout the entire CPB time. SBUF-SMUF has been our standard of care for the last 5 years. This observational seeks to describe the clinical and immunologic outcomes of infants and children undergoing cardiac surgery with CBP and SBUF-SMUF.