Aortic valve replacement with mechanical or biological prosthesis with extracorporeal circulation is the gold-standard for the treatment of calcific aortic stenosis. Although the results are excellent with the conventional approach some elderly patients, with multiple high-risk comorbid conditions, reoperations and severe left ventricular dysfunction have high surgical risk. During the last yea...

A 72-year-old man was hospitalized for congestive heart failure and had a favorable response to the intensive medical treatment received. The patient had a history of ischemic heart disease with chronic anterior infarction of several years’ duration and three-vessel disease revascularized percutaneously some years previously. Two years before the current hospitalization, he underwent aortic val...

BACKGROUND To evaluate initial multicenter results with minimally invasive transapical aortic valve implantation (TAP-AVI) for high risk patients with aortic stenosis. METHODS AND RESULTS TAP-AVI was performed via a small anterolateral minithoracotomy with or without femoro-femoral extracorporeal circulation (ECC) on the beating heart. A pericardial xenograft fixed within a stainless steel, b...

Transcatheter aortic valves implantation (TAVI) is a valid treatment for high-risk surgical candidates with symptomatic severe aortic stenosis; the safety and effectiveness of TAVI have been demonstrated in numerous clinical studies, national registries and randomized trials. Nevertheless, from this cohort of patients have been often excluded patients with prior mitral valve surgery because con...

We present the case of a 72-year-old woman diagnosed with rheumatic fever at the age of 6. In 1972, she was diagnosed with mitral valve insufficiency and mitral valve stenosis, then in 1974, a decision was made to perform mitral valve replacement surgery with a 32-mm Braunwald-Cutter ball cage prosthesis. An echocardiogram performed in 2014 revealed normal biventricular systolic function, mecha...

An 81-year-old man, who had undergone a complex cardiosurgical procedure 8 years previously (aortic valve replacement by Medtronic Hancock II 23 mm and mitral valve replacement by Medtronic Hancock II 31 mm, tricuspid valve repair using the Kay technique, and coronary artery bypass surgery with left internal mammary artery (LIMA) to left anterior descending (LAD)), was admitted to the hospital ...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of the prosthesis type on early mortality and long-term survival after re-replacement of aortic valve prosthesis, especially in patients over 60 years old. METHODS Late outcome of 223 patients who underwent a reoperation on the aortic valve and received a mechanical (mechanical group) or biological (biological group) heart valve...

OBJECTIVES As many as 50% of patients with severe symptomatic mitral valve regurgitation are denied surgical valve replacement or repair due to high operative risk. We describe an early series of cases of transcatheter implantation with a CardiAQ™ mitral valve via a transapical approach. METHODS Three consecutive patients with an Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) mortality score of >22% were...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study is to see how the sutureless, stentless, Perceval S aortic valves behave when implanted in elderly patients with small aortic root and the comparison with a second group of patients with similar characteristics where a conventional stented bioprosthesis was implanted. This is a prospective randomized institutional study. METHODS Our material is composed from 2...

High precision is necessary during percutaneous transcatheter heart valve implantation. The precision of the implantation has been established by increasing the heart rate (usually to 200 beats per minute) to the point of significantly reduced cardiac output and thus minimizing valve movement. Routinely, this tachycardia is induced by rapid pacing. Here we report a case of failure to pace durin...