The anomalous origin of the left coronary artery from the pulmonary artery - known as Bland-White-Garland syndrome - is a rare congenital malformation that affects 1 in 300,000 live births. Most patients die in infancy without any surgical treatment. Some patients who survive past childhood often have varying symptoms such as myocardial ischemia, impaired left ventricular function, mitral regur...

This paper considers the effects of the pericardium on a mechanical model of the heart. The model, based on the theory of large elastic deformation, makes use of experimental data for the pericardium reported herein. INTRODUCTION The pericardium is the tough fibrous sac enclosing the lean of most vertebrates, including man. It serves to .told the heart in a fixed position and to isolate and xot...

Background: Ultrasound imaging is an effective and routine diagnostic tool for identifying fetal anomalies. The congenital defect of Pentalogy of Cantrell, also known as Thoracoabdominal Ectopia, consists of 5 defects that include a cleft lower sternum, an anterior diaphragmatic defect, and the absence of the parietal pericardium, a connected or separate omphalocele, and a major cardiac anomaly...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to evaluate, using echocardiography, the functioning of the mitral valve apparatus in patients submitted to standardized bovine pericardium chordae implantation to substitute ruptured chordae tendineae or elongated chordae with a significant degree of thinning. METHOD Standardized bovine pericardium chordae were implanted in 23 patients with mitral va...

PURPOSE There is increasing evidence that epicardial fat (i.e., adipose tissue contained within the pericardium) plays an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease. Obtaining the epicardial fat volume from routinely performed non-enhanced cardiac CT scans is therefore of clinical interest. The purpose of this work is to investigate the feasibility of automatic pericardium segm...

BACKGROUND Bovine pericardium is one of the most widely used materials in bioprosthetic heart valves. Immunologic responses have been implicated as potential causes of limited durability of xenogenic valves. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of decellularization and α-galactosidase (α-gal) to remove major xenoreactive antigens from xenogenic tissues. MATERIALS AND METHODS Recomb...

During pulmonary artery constriction (PAC), an experimental model of acute right ventricular (RV) pressure overload, the interventricular septum flattens and inverts. Finite element (FE) analysis has shown that the septum is subject to axial compression and bending when so deformed. This study examines the effects of acute PAC on the left ventricular (LV) free wall and the role the pericardium ...

This paper describes a pericardial fold that has not yet been mentioned in the Anatomy or Surgery literature.The "Zamvar" pericardial fold is formed by the parietal pericardium and the overlying fibrous pericardium folding back onto themselves over the left-sided pulmonary veins; it is 1 to 3 mm wide, and runs from the inferior edge of the left inferior pulmonary vein, to the superior edge of t...