Desmopressin does not decrease bleeding after cardiac operation in young children

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Vasopressin and Desmopressin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

This study was designed to investigate the effect of desmopressin on blood loss during the first 24 hours after cardiac operation in children undergoing principally complex surgical procedures.

Why It Was Studied

Young children undergoing complex cardiac operation lose more blood after cardiopulmonary bypass than do older patients.

A coagulation profile including bleeding time, quantitation of von Willebrand factor, and qualitative analysis of the factor VII:von Willebrand factor complex was performed before, 30 minutes after, and 3 hours after the operation.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 112 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as infants, young children, children and teenagers, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, single-blind and placebo-controlled.

Because people in this Vasopressin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Only one side, usually the patients, was kept unaware of whether Vasopressin was given.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Vasopressin group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

Statistical analysis was performed with Student's unpaired t test and chi 2 analysis.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Blood Loss, Surgical, Blood Volume, Cardiac Surgical Procedures, Cardiopulmonary Bypass and Deamino Arginine Vasopressin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, single-blind and placebo-controlled study of Vasopressin and Desmopressin in 112 patients.

The publication is from 1993 (The Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Vasopressin compound page and the Desmopressin compound page, all human trials.