doi:10.1016/j.jtcvs.2007.10.060 D espite the widely held consensus that valve repair is the preferred surgical treatment for patients suffering from degenerative mitral valve disease, valve replacement for this condition remains all too prevalent. In the past few years interest in mitral valve repair has expanded among cardiologists and surgeons, with the recognition that asymptomatic patients ...

Libman-Sacks endocarditis (LSE) is a common manifestation of valve disease in antiphospholipid syndrome. Mitral valve LSE is characterized by verrucous vegetations on the atrial surfaces of valve leaflets. In this report, mitral valve LSE was visualized by real time 3D transesophageal echocardiography (TEE). 3D TEE provides a unique en face view of the mitral valve akin to a surgical or autopsy...

Obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (obstructive HCM) is a hereditary disease characterized by septal hypertrophy and dynamic left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) obstruction. Other than hypertrophy, mitral valve abnormalities are also quite common in patients with obstructive HCM, which may contribute to systolic anterior motion (SAM) of the LVOT Surgical myectomy standard treatment achie...

Minimally invasive procedures have become pivotal in cardiac surgery, especially for the ever-increasing group of high-risk patients. These procedures are defined by the surgical access and/or the avoidance of cardiopulmonary bypass. Both of these aspects have been shown to be beneficial for patients with an increased perioperative risk. For high-risk patients with coronary artery disease, off-...

Mitral and aortic valve aneurysms are uncommon, but the coexistence of both mitral and aortic valve aneurysms in the same patient is a rather unusual finding in the literature. We report a rare clinical case of a patient with both mitral and aortic valve aneurysms and a rupture of the mitral valve aneurysm, as the main echocardiographic manifestations of infective endocarditis. This clinical ca...

The concomitant presence of posterior mitral annular calcification and infectious mitral valve lesions poses a technical challenge with considerable perioperative risk when using previously proposed techniques for mitral valve surgery. Herein, we report a case of the use of a modified surgical technique to successfully treat a patient with mitral infective endocarditis complicated by a subendoc...

Background In the context of endemic left-sided rheumatic heart disease, tricuspid valve disease requiring surgical intervention merits closer scrutiny in order to analyse surgical outcomes with presently employed techniques. Aims To evaluate the results of simultaneous tricuspid valve surgery for severe functional tricuspid regurgitation in rheumatic heart disease at the time of left-sided val...

ObjectivesAtrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia. Drug treatment of AF usually leads to an unsatisfactory rate of recurrence. The Cox-maze III procedure for atrial fibrillation has been effective in restoring sinus rhythm in patients with mitral valve disease. MethodsFrom September 2000 to September 2002, 10 consecutive patients with rheumatic mitral valve dise...

Mitral valve repair is considered the procedure of choice for correcting mitral regurgitation in myxomatous disease, providing long-term results that are superior to those with valve replacement. The use of artificial chordae to replace elongated or ruptured chordae responsible for mitral valve prolapse and severe mitral regurgitation has been the subject of extensive experimental work to defin...

Transoesophageal echocardiography allows the precise assessment of mitral valve pathology. Perioperative assessment of the mitral valve provides valuable support for the cardiac surgical team in planning a repair or replacement of this unique three-dimensional structure. This article will review the echocardiographic methods and views that allow a systematic assessment of the mitral valve appar...