Department Name

Laboratory Research

In addition to its clinical research efforts The Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery has ongoing laboratory investigations in close collaboration with other research groups at the University of Florida. As part of The University of Florida study: "Cognitive function after CABG surgery with or without cardiopulmonary bypass" the systemic inflammatory response in patients undergoing bypass surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass is being compared to patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass without the bypass machine.

Our lung transplant program is studying patients that develop an acute injury to their lung shortly after transplantation. Efforts are underway to understand which patients are more susceptible to this reperfusion injury and how to identify those patients at higher risk for this condition. Ultimately we would like to prevent it from occurring altogether.

In addition, as part of its commitment to developing and implementing newer surgical technologies, the Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery is working in close collaboration with the Department of Biomedical Engineering at evaluating better strategies to eliminate atrial fibrillation. Newer technologies that allow surgeons to create lines of ablation, which can prevent atrial fibrillation from propagating, are being evaluated with high speed imaging techniques that allow us to visualize waves of electrical activity in the heart. We hope to identify those technologies that show the most promise at being effective in the clinical arena (figure 1).

Figure 1. Bipolar radiofrequency energy has been used to create a line of ablation, isolating tissue with a paced rhythm from tissue that is in atrial fibrillation.