Differences in the recovery of platelet counts after biological aortic valve replacement

a Clinic for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Klinikum Karlsburg, Heart and Diabetes Center Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Karlsburg, Germany b Institute of Biometry and Medical Informatics, Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald, Germany *Corresponding author. Klinikum Karlsburg, Klinik für Herz-Thorax und Gefäßchirurgie, Greifswalder Straße 11, 17495 Karlsburg, Germany. Tel.: +49 38355 701330 (Ms. Schulz). E-mail address : Ludovici{at}gmx.de (L. Hilker). Observations among Karlsburg patients in 2006 revealed that the majority of very low platelet levels inducing postoperative heparin-induced-thrombocytopenia (HIT)-diagnostics with at the end negative results appeared related to aortic valve replacement (AVR) with stentless bioprostheses. We compared the postoperative courses of platelet counts in patients having had AVR with stentless prostheses (Sorin Biomedica Freedom Solo [SOLO]) or stented prostheses (Carpentier Edwards Perimount [PM]). Between February 2005 and April 2007, 209 patients received AVR with SOLO, in 137 patients a PM-prosthesis was implanted. The mean platelet levels were compared from the first up to the fifth postoperative day. A higher occurrence of platelet levels below 100 Gpt/l between the second and the fifth postoperative day was found in the SOLO-group (71.9%) compared with the other biological substitute PM (36.6%). Differences in platelet counts between SOLO- and PM-subgroups were measured for day 2 ( P =0.03), day 3 ( P =0.0004) day 4 ( P =0.0007), day 5 ( P =0.0002) and at discharge ( P