Experimental studies on three types of heparin-coated cardiopulmonary bypass circuits.

In cardiovascular operations, we have usually used heparin-coated cardiopulmonary bypass circuits with low systemic heparinization. Three types of heparin-coated cardiopulmonary bypass circuits are available in Japan: 2 of the 3 have covalent heparin bonding, and the other has ionic heparin bonding. We studied these circuits in ex vivo experiments to explore which were the best in terms of biocompatibility. In this study we compared the Carmeda system (Medtronic) and the Capiox system (Terumo) with covalent heparin bonding, and the Duraflo-II (Baxter) with ionic heparin bonding, evaluating them in ex vivo experiments. They were primed with fresh human blood, and we studied and compared the platelet counts, fibrinogen, D-dimmer, beta-thioguanine (TG), thrombin-antithrombin complex (TAT), and C3a and C4a of each of them. Additional research will be presented in the future.