Automated control of postoperative hypertension: A prospective, randomized multicenter study☆

Abstract Hypertension after a cardiac operation is a frequent phenomenon. Complications resulting from this include bleeding, disruption of vascular suture lines, subendocardial ischemia, and possible cerebrovascular accidents. Treatment with sodium nitroprusside has become accepted practice to prevent these complications. To improve control of arterial blood pressure, a closed-loop system for sodium nitroprusside administration was developed. A prospective, randomized multicenter study was carried out postoperatively in 180 cardiac surgical patients to evaluate the performance of this system compared with manual control of infusion. Adherence of mean arterial blood pressure to ±10% of the target blood pressure occurred 85% of the time with the automatic system and 61% of the time with manual regulation ( p p p p