An 80-year-old man with a history of hypertension, ischaemic cerebrovascular accident and bio-prosthetic aortic valve replacement because of symptomatic aortic stenosis two months before admission (sutureless Perceval Sorin) presented to the hospital with fever. On clinical examination the patient was not dyspnoeic; his blood pressure was 110/70 mmHg. The sternotomy scar appeared normal. On car...

OBJECTIVE Life expectancy of cryopreserved allografts implanted in infants is different from those implanted in adults. A morphological study of explanted allograft heart valves was performed to determine the mechanism of deterioration and to compare cryopreserved arterial and heart valve allografts from adult patients with those explanted from infants. METHOD Between 1987 and 1996, 209 cryop...

BACKGROUND Embolic events are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with infective endocarditis. We analyzed the database of the prospective cohort study SEI in order to identify factors associated with the occurrence of embolic events and to develop a scoring system for the assessment of the risk of embolism. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed 1456 episodes of infective endoc...

A 59 year old man underwent mechanical tricuspid valve replacement and removal of pacemaker generator along with 4 pacemaker leads for pacemaker endocarditis and superior vena cava obstruction after an earlier percutaneous extraction had to be abandoned, 13 years ago, due to cardiac arrest, accompanied by silent, unsuspected right atrial perforation and exteriorisation of lead. Postoperative co...

Endocarditis is characterized by vegetations, which is a mass of platelets, fibrin, micro-colonies of micro-organisms, and inflammatory cells, in the endocardium. Over the past three decades, the incidence of right-sided endocarditis has risen dramatically in Pakistan. We report a 36-year woman with a history of repeated intravenous analgesic injections for low back pain, presenting with high gra...

Right-sided endocarditis is relatively rare and can occasionally be complicated by vertebral osteomyelitis (VO). We describe successful treatment, including valve repair for tricuspid endocarditis associated with VO. A 77-year-old man presented with back pain and high fever. Magnetic resonance imaging demonstrated VO. Despite 2 months of intravenous antibiotics, the infectious signs persisted a...

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the risk factors for developing infective endocarditis (IE). Right-sided IE occurs in 5%–10% cases, and pulmonary valve (PV) involved less than 2% such patients. Literature data are few, optimal treatment methods, indications surgery, types operative techniques still under debate. We present an adult patient with a rare combination ventricular septal def...

INTRODUCTION Myocardial abscess is a rare and potentially fatal condition. Metastatic myocardial abscess in the setting of infective endocarditis has been infrequently reported in the medical literature. To the best of the authors' knowledge no case of myocardial abscess affecting the free wall of the left ventricle secondary to infective endocarditis of a right-sided heart valve has been repor...

Introduction: The aim was to explore the developmental relationships between the angles of septal deviations and the degree of the mastoid pneumatization.   Materials and Methods: In total, 143 patients with a diagnosis of septal deviation who underwent septoplasty were included. The patients were divided into three groups in terms of the ...

Transesophageal echocardiography has significantly improved the detection of vegetative lesions, including those associated with indwelling central venous lines. However, in certain cases, the increased mobility of these lesions as well as the presence of indwelling catheters obscure the precise delineation of their origin and the detection of attachment to adjacent structures. We report a case...