OXIDATIVE PROCESSES

Cancer surgeries are often extensive, invasive, and result in significant blood loss. They are frequently part of complex treatments that include radiation and chemotherapy.

These treatments damage tumor cells through free radicals, which can also cause widespread oxidative damage. Surgical trauma and severe blood loss further contribute to oxidative stress.
This imbalance can lead to endogenous intoxication and multiple organ failure, occurring in 35-55% of cases after massive blood loss.

Mortality rates for these complications can be high, reaching 30-75% or more, depending on the severity of organ failure and endotoxemia.

Along with this, it is necessary to take into account the effect of anesthesia on the body. The action of most anesthetics is carried out through a change in the physicochemical properties of biomembranes, which, in turn, suffer from increased free radical oxidation. General anesthesia has both a direct and indirect activating effect on free radical processes.

Cancer surgeries

Thus, cancer patients who undergo extensive and traumatic surgeries represent an extremely vulnerable group in terms of the development of acute multiple organ failure syndrome (MODS) due to dysfunction of the endogenous antioxidant defense system under the influence of many oxidative stress factors that are not subject to spontaneous correction.

This circumstance is due to both the presence of pronounced initial shifts in peroxidation processes and the limitations of internal compensatory mechanisms. The expanded picture of oxidative stress has a damaging effect on the state of the immune system and is accompanied by pronounced immunosuppression.

Under these conditions, prerequisites are created for the development of postoperative purulent-septic complications.

The problem...

of oxidative stress and depletion of the body's antioxidant system, ways to correct these disorders in purulent-septic conditions are not sufficiently covered in the literature. The main attention of scientists involved in surgical purulent-septic complications is aimed at optimizing antibacterial and detoxification therapy.

In some works...

there are indications of significant disorders in the functioning of the body's oxidative-antioxidant system developing against the background of purulent-septic conditions and the advisability of using a number of synthetic antioxidant drugs to correct them.

Antioxidant therapy

Considering the role of lipid peroxidation in the development of the above-mentioned life-threatening postoperative complications, improving antioxidant therapy in cancer patients during surgical treatment in the presence of their inherent initial metabolic disorders is an extremely urgent problem.

It is obvious that the greatest effectiveness of antioxidant therapy can be achieved only if the activity of antioxidant factors corresponds to the depth of the oxidative-antioxidant balance disorders.

Using lactoferrin

In critical conditions associated with endotoxicosis, severe infection, depletion of the body's antioxidant system, the need for lactoferrin increases many times over, and the natural mechanisms of its production prove insufficient. To date, there are numerous references in the literature on the advisability of using lactoferrin in infectious diseases, secondary immunodeficiencies, and gastrointestinal diseases.

Lactoferrin

Of great interest is the endogenous component of the antioxidant defense of the human body - lactoferrin. Lactoferrin is an iron-containing glycoprotein present in significant quantities in all secretions and neutrophils of a person. Lactoferrin has multifaceted physiological functions in the body. Being an active antioxidant, it exhibits detoxifying and anti-inflammatory effects, and also has independent antibacterial and immunomodulatory properties.