Bone wax is the substance which has been used for hemostasis in different surgical fields for up to one hundred years and historically used in our center to prevent sternal bleeding and subsequent complications. Recently, reabsorbable gelatin powder has come into use. Up to now there are no clinical studies that compare these two substances. Between 1st January and 31st December 2004, 1249 subs...

Post-sternotomy mediastinitis (PSM) is a rare but devastating complication, which may occur after cardiac surgery, and which increases mortality and morbidity tremendously. This study showed a statistically significant increased in-hospital mortality of patients with deep sternal wound infection (DSWI) compared with patients without DSWI (8.1% versus 2.7%, respectively) (p=0.03). For long-term ...

INTRODUCTION Sternal wound infection caused by Mycobacterium chelonae, a member of the rapidly growing nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), is rare and may present without signs and symptoms of systemic infection. METHODS We present a patient who had a M. chelonae infection of the sternum following excision of a left atrial myxoma and conducted a review of the literature from 1976 to 2013. RE...

BACKGROUND We sought to assess the efficiency of two different sternal closure techniques in preventing sternal wound complications (SWC). A cost analysis was also considered. METHODS Between January 2008 and April 2010, 1,644 consecutive cardiac surgery patients who underwent cardiac surgery in our institute were prospectively collected. A total of 1,072 patients received a standard paraster...

OBJECTIVES To determine the sensitivity and specificity of a novel ELISA for the serodiagnosis of surgical site infection (SSI) due to staphylococci following median sternotomy. METHODS Twelve patients with a superficial sternal SSI and 19 with a deep sternal SSI due to Staphylococcus aureus were compared with 37 control patients who also underwent median sternotomy for cardiac surgery but ex...

Chronic Q fever is most commonly associated with culture-negative endocarditis and less frequently with infection of vascular grafts, infection of aneurysms, hepatitis, pulmonary disease, osteomyelitis, and neurological abnormalities. We report a case of chronic sternal wound infection, polyclonal gammopathy, and mixed cryoglobulinemia in which Q fever endocarditis was subsequently diagnosed. P...