The Systemic Inflammatory Response to Cardiac Surgery

Received from the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care, University College Hospital, Galway, Ireland; the Department of Anesthesia, Intensive Care and Pain Medicine, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland; and the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.THE purpose of this review is to evaluate recent developments in our understanding of the inflammatory response to cardiac surgery. Scientific knowledge in this field is continually expanding, potentially significant advances are regularly reported, and this area constitutes a major interface of clinical and basic scientific research. The review is divided into four major…