Prof. Carlos G. Duran (Fig 1) passed away on his 85th birthday, June 11th. He and his wife had returned to their family home in Bilbao this spring due to his failing health. Prof. Duran was born in Tetuan, Morocco in 1932 as the son of a Belgian mother and a Spanish father who was a general surgeon. Prof. Duran completed his M.D. at Madrid University in 1956, followed by a residency in General ...

BACKGROUND Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) is common in patients with mitral valve disease; however, there are no straightforward, rapidly determinably criteria available for deciding whether TR repair should be performed during mitral valve replacement. The aim of our retrospective study was to identify a simple and fast criterion for determining whether TR repair should be performed in patients ...

Mitral valve regurgitation is a relatively common and important heart valve lesion in clinical practice and adequate assessment is fundamental to decision on management, repair or replacement. Disease localised to the posterior mitral valve leaflet or focal involvement of the anterior mitral valve leaflet is most amenable to mitral valve repair, whereas patients with extensive involvement of th...

BACKGROUND Long-term survival for combined aortic and mitral valve replacement appears to be determined by the mitral valve prosthesis from our previous studies. This 21-year retrospective study assess long-term outcome and durability of aortic valve replacement (AVR) with either concomitant mitral valve replacement (MVR) or mitral valve repair (MVrep). We consider only a single mechanical pros...

AIMS We sought to investigate the additional value of real-time three-dimensional transoesophageal echocardiography (RT 3D TOE)-guided sizing for predicting annuloplasty ring size during mitral valve repair. METHODS AND RESULTS In 53 patients undergoing elective mitral valve repair, an RT 3D TOE was performed pre- and post-operatively. The digitally stored loops were imported into a software ...

In the western world, the prevalence of mitral regurgitation-particularly that due to degenerative disease-has gradually increased despite a substantial decrease in rheumatic disease. If present, secondary ventricular dysfunction, potentially irreversible when clinically diagnosed, requires close echocardiographic follow-up in order to establish a subclinical diagnosis. Thus, echocardiography h...

OBJECTIVES We sought to determine, using serial echocardiography, the hydrodynamic mechanisms involved in the occurrence of hemolysis after mitral valve repair. BACKGROUND Recently, fluid dynamic simulation models have identified distinct patterns of mitral regurgitant flow disturbances in patients with mitral prosthetic hemolysis that were associated with high shear stress and may therefore ...

Rheumatic valve disease, a consequence of acute rheumatic fever, remains endemic in developing countries in the sub-Saharan region where it is the leading cause of heart failure and cardiovascular death, involving predominantly a young population. The involvement of the mitral valve is pathognomonic and mitral surgery has become the lone therapeutic option for the majority of these patients. Ho...

Diseased, replaced or repaired mitral valve can lead to restricted blood flow to left ventricle and inadequate flow in left ventricular assist device (LVAD). A middle age woman with 'burnt out' hypertrophic cardiomyopathy had mitral valve repair for mitral regurgitation. She needed LVAD to support severe decompensating heart failure. Repaired mitral valve posed a risk of restricted flow through...

INTRODUCTION We analysed retrospectively patients who underwent mitral valve repair using techniques beyond the "French correction", as popularised by Carpentier. METHODS From June 1997 to June 2006, 153 patients underwent mitral valve repair. Their mean age was 63.1 +/- 13.5 years (range 19-87). Mean Euroscore was 4.9 +/- 2.1 (2-13). Type II lesions were present in 109 cases. There were 123 ...