Give Me a Shot of Holy Water: Critical Elements in Myocardial Protection during Cardiac Surgery.

There is a surprising paucity of information on myocardial protection during cardiac surgery in the popular techniques books on cardiac surgery. For instance, Khonsari's otherwise superb book, Cardiac Surgery: Safeguards and Pitfalls in Operative Technique, has only three of its 300 pages that address myocardial protection, while Cooley's book, Techniques in Cardiac Surgery, has none at all. Similarly, the major textbooks of cardiothoracic surgery (Kirklin & Barrett-Boyes, Sabiston & Spencer, and Cohn & Edmunds) all tend to dwell on basic science and pharmacology, while barely addressing the actual techniques and strategies of myocardial protection during cardiac surgical operations. [Khonsari, Cooley, Kouchoukos, Selke, Cohn].