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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2008;136:236-237
© 2008 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Letter to the Editor

Reply to the Editor:

University Hospital Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

I greatly appreciate the comments of our French colleagues on our article describing an alternative approach to chest drainage using Redon drains. The main concern they raised was that the high suction used in our system could cause suction lesions on the heart or coronary grafts. They have experienced one case of bypass necrosis resulting from the high suction, but no such complication occurred in our cohort of 4297 patients. I have occasionally observed suction lesions on the heart or even the grafts during reoperations for bleeding when removing a drain that was in direct contact with them, but such lesions always appeared harmless and never led to any problems. In my opinion, the case of bypass necrosis described by Al-Attar, Raffoul, and Nataf . . . [Full Text of this Article]