PhD conferral Mr. Alessandro Varrica, MSc.

“S100B Protein and Congenital Heart Diseases: Brain Aspects”

Key words: infants, peri-operative brain injuri, risks, neurobiomarker S100B

Today, in about 8% of infants complicated by congenital heart diseases early peri-operative brain injury can occur. In addition, about 30% of these infants can show impaired neurodevelopment in childhood. At this stage, no reliable tool exists for the early detection of cases at risk for short/long term brain damage.

In this thesis evidence is provided that a neurobiomarker namely S100B protein can offer useful information on brain peri-operative monitoring as well as in the early detection of cases at risk for adverse perioperative outcome. Furthermore, potential limitation to the protein reliability as neuromarker have been also investigated.