Notably, patients
undergoing high-risk cardiac surgery are those who would
benefit more from improvement in cardioprotective strategies.
Since the cardiac protective properties of volatile agents are
well established in cellular and preclinical studies, our negative
findings could be attributed to the absence of these cardiac protective
properties in patients undergoing high-risk cardiac
surgery, since in these patients, the mechanisms of cardiac
damage might only in part be due to ischaemia/reperfusion