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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 1999;117:408
© 1999 Mosby, Inc.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Profound systemic hypothermia and release of neurotransmitter amino acids

It is somewhat surprising and quite unusual to receive a letter about an article that we published in the Journal more than 3 years ago. The fast-paced developments in neuroscience make it somewhat difficult to put the findings of an older study in perspective. In our article titled "Profound Systemic Hypothermia Inhibits the Release of Neurotransmitter Amino Acids in Spinal Cord Ischemia" (J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 1995;110:27-35), we simply described the findings of a study designed to clarify the role of excitotoxicity in spinal cord ischemia and a possible mechanism for the protective effect of hypothermia. For the first time in the spinal cord, amino acid levels were measured under conditions simulating the clinical situation, and several of the findings broke new ground in this field. More recent studies put those findings in a proper perspective, describing mechanisms that quite simply were unknown at the time of publication of our article.

Our paper is criticized for not discussing references that appeared in the literature after the paper was published. The authors of the letter also claim that they re-analyzed statistically our data and reached different results, indirectly implying that our statistical methods were flawed. We wonder, however, how they were able to perform statistical analysis without having the raw data. In the data table, we provided mean values and standard deviations for the various experimental groups. The statistical analysis was performed by taking into consideration the results from individual experiments. Any analysis that compares only mean values of different groups is simply not accurate. We also wish to point out that sham animals served for validation of methodology only, without per se constituting an experimental group. It is a commonly accepted practice to use baseline values as control, so long as they do not differ statistically among the experimental groups.

The field of ischemia and neuronal cell death has expanded the horizons of neuroscience tremendously in recent years. We believe our article provided some insights into the pathophysiology of spinal cord ischemia.

Chris K. Rokkas, MD
Nicholas T. Kouchoukos, MD
Cardiac, Thoracic & Vascular Surgery Inc.
3009 North Ballas Rd
Suite 266 C
St Louis, MO 63131
12/8/95023

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This Article Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Personal Folders Download to citation manager Permission Requests Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation