BACKGROUND Hypoxic cell death follows interruption of blood supply to tissues. Although successful restoration of blood flow is mandatory for salvage of ischemic tissues, reperfusion can paradoxically place tissues at risk of further injury. Brief periods of ischemia applied at the onset of reperfusion have been shown to reduce ischemia-reperfusion (IR) injury, a phenomenon called postcondition...

Liver ischemia/reperfusion injury may significantly compromise hepatic postoperative function. Various hepatoprotective methods have been improvised, aiming at attenuating IR injury. With ischemic preconditioning (IPC), the liver is conditioned with a brief ischemic period followed by reperfusion, prior to sustained ischemia. Ischemic postconditioning (IPostC), consisting of intermittent sequen...

BACKGROUND Remote ischemic perconditioning (RIPerC), remote ischemic postconditioning (RIPostC), and remote ischemic perconditioning + postconditioning (RIPerC + RIPostC) protect against renal ischemia reperfusion injury (IRI). However, the most beneficial approach among these is not known. AIMS To compare the protective effects and study the mechanisms of three different remote ischemic cond...

Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) is one of the most potent angiogenic growth factors. It improves angiogenesis and tissue perfusion in ischemic skeletal muscle. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that ischemic postconditioning is effective for salvaging ischemic skeletal muscle resulting from limb ischemia-reperfusion injury, and that the mechanism involves expression of HIF-1α....

Hepatic Ischemia and Reperfusion Injury (IRI) is a major cause of liver damage during liver surgery and transplantation. Ischemic preconditioning and postconditioning are strategies that can reduce IRI. In this study, different combined types of pre- and postconditioning procedures were tested in a murine warm hepatic IRI model to evaluate their protective effects. Proanthocyanidins derived fro...

Novel and innovative approaches are essential in developing new treatments and improving clinical outcomes in patients with ischemic stroke. Remote ischemic conditioning (RIC) is a series of mechanical interruptions in blood flow of a distal organ, following end organ reperfusion, shown to significantly reduce infarct size through inhibition of oxidation and inflammation. Ischemia/reperfusion (...

OBJECTIVE Ischemic pre-conditioning and post-conditioning are useful manipulations to reduce the undesirable effects of ischemia-reperfusion skin flap each. But the impact of post-conditioning on the pre-conditioning skin flap is not manifested. Here we investigated the influence of ischemic post-conditioning in a preconditioned axial pattern skin flap model. METHOD We used the skin flap in 4...

In Reply:—We thank Drs. Xia and Irwin for their interest in our study on the role of -adrenergic signaling in anesthetic postconditioning and in the accompanying editorial view. We agree with Drs. Xia and Irwin that, besides their energy-sparing effect, several alternative mechanisms of blockers might be responsible for their infarct size– reducing capacity. Apart from their effect on the inter...

Background The use of halogenated anaesthetics in cardiac surgery is still controversial. Preconditioning and postconditioning are the well described mechanisms that explain the protective myocardial effect of specific drugs in order to prevent the occurrence and/or to reduce the size of a necrotic post-ischemic myocardial area [1]: they play a well recognized role in the “protective effect” of...

T otal coronary occlusion without prior development of collateral circulation results in a wavefront of myocardial necrosis, which moves from subendocardium to subepicardium. The early restoration of flow by pharmacological or mechanical means may interrupt the development of necrosis, saving the jeopardized myocardium. Twenty years ago, experimental studies revealed an endogenous defense mecha...