BACKGROUND Current heart valve prostheses are constructed mimicking the native aortic valve. Special hemodynamic characteristics of the mitral valve such as a nonaxial central inflow with creation of a left ventricular vortex have so far not been taken into account. A new polycarbonaturethane (PCU) bileaflet heart valve prosthesis with special design for the mitral position is introduced, and r...

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is a recently developed surgical technique to treat symptomatic aortic valve stenosis in elderly and high-risk patients (Eltchaninoff et al., 2008; Ferrari & von Segesser, 2010). Compared to the standard aortic valve replacement surgery, the TAVI limits the surgical access to either a small minithoracotomy (transapical TAVI) or femoral approach (tr...

The Medtronic-Hall cardiac valvular prosthesis has been available for insertion since 1977. This report reviews the English language literature concerning that valve published during the last 14 years. The review is focused on three modes of assessment. First, experience with valve implantation techniques and their results has demonstrated that with careful attention to education of the implant...

Mechanical prosthesis is the first choice for valve replacement at the mitral position in children. Replacement of the original prosthesis because of prosthesis-patient mismatch (PPM) is almost inevitable when prostheses are implanted in small children. The impact of PPM on long-term mortality becomes significant when the effective orifice area (EOA) is severely reduced. In these cases prosthes...

Background. Mitral valve replacement can be very difficult to obtain in infants because the valve annulus diameter can be smaller than the available prosthesis. Case Report. We describe the case of a 2-month-old female weighing 3.5 kg affected by mitral valve dysplasia leading to severe valve stenosis. Despite full medication, the clinical conditions were critical and surgery was undertaken. Th...

The purpose of this study was to determine the magnetic resonance (MR) safety aspects and artifacts for three different heart valve prostheses and two different annuloplasty rings that have not been evaluated previously in association with the 1.5-T MR environment. Ex vivo testing was performed using previously described techniques for the evaluation of magnetic field interactions (deflection a...

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is a new method for patients with severe aortic stenosis at high surgical risk, such as previous cardiac surgery. The presence of mechanical mitral prosthesis might complicate TAVI because of possible interference between the both prosthesis. Some reports have already demonstrated the feasibility of TAVI in such patients. We report our experience w...

The study was aimed at assessing T cell subsets of peripheral blood from recipients of long-term functioning (more than 60 months) biological and mechanical heart valve prostheses. The absolute and relative number of CD4 and CD8 T cell subsets was analyzed: naïve (N, CD45RA(+)CD62L(+)), central memory (CM, CD45RA(-)CD62L(+)), effector memory (EM, CD45RA(-)CD62L(-)), and terminally differentiate...