Bronchospasm during Cardiopulmonary Bypass

Abstract

Severe bronchospasm associated with hyperinflation of, and inability to deflate, the lung during and after extracorporeal circulation (ECC) is a rare complication, despite the fact that open heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass is now performed in more than 100,000 patients per year in the United States. Only one case of bronchospasm following ECC has been reported (1). Severe bronchospasm following thoracotomy, however, has been reported more frequently (2-5). The incidence of bronchospasm and massive lung collapse following general surgery was less than 0.2% in a series of nearly 29,000 operations reviewed by Waters (6). In more than 10 years of experience with more than 1000 cases per year in our institution, bronchospasm during or following ECC was an unknown phenomenon. However, recently, two patients who underwent coronary artery revascularization had severe bronchospasm following ECC.