[Prevention of infectious complications in heart surgery patients with dalargin]

The authors studied the effect of dalargin, a Russian produced synthetic analogue of regulatory opioid peptides on the incidence, severity, and outcomes of infectious complications in cardiosurgical patients with congenital and acquired heart diseases. The use of dalargin in the complex of multicomponent anesthesiological protection--neuroleptanalgesia, facilitated relative limitation of the sequelae of stress-induced secondary immunodeficiency in the form of increased risk of the development of postoperative purulent and inflammatory diseases. This resulted both in reduction of lethality from infectious complications, anterior purulent mediastinitis among others, and in decrease of the absolute number and percentage of postoperative complications of infectious etiology. This points to the principal possibility of formation by means of dalargin of the corresponding level of adaptation to the damaging action of surgical stress, which is evidently mediated by optimization of neurovegetative protection in particular due to the antistress properties characteristic of the synthetic opioid hexapeptide.