A33-year-old man presented to the hospital with shortness of breath and chest pain. He was subsequently diagnosed with Streptococcus mitis endocarditis involving the aortic valve. The initial echocardiogram revealed moderate aortic valve regurgitation and a normal mitral valve without regurgitation. The patient was treated with afterload reduction and antibiotics. Blood cultures were negative w...

We discuss the case of a 24-year-old woman with Lutembacher syndrome and severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR) who underwent surgical closure of atrial septal defect and mitral valve replacement without tricuspid annuloplasty despite a severe TR and a large tricuspid annulus on preoperative echo. The pathophysiology of Lutembacher syndrome is discussed below. The utility of perioperative echocard...

PURPOSE We describe midterm outcomes after division of secondary chords (chordal cutting) combined with downsized ring annuloplasty for ischemic mitral regurgitation (IMR). METHODS We compared the clinical outcomes in patients who underwent chordal cutting with downsized ring annuloplasty (CC-group, n = 15) and those who underwent conventional ring annuloplasty only (Conventional-group, n = 3...

BACKGROUND Durability assessment of mitral valve repair for degenerative valve incompetence is actually limited to reoperation as the primary indicator, with valve-related risk factors for late death as a secondary indicator. We assessed serial echocardiographic follow-up of valve function as an indicator of the durability of mitral valve repair. METHODS AND RESULTS In 242 patients who had un...

A 2-month-old girl presenting with heart failure and murmur was investigated using Doppler echocardiography and cardiac catheterization revealing an anomalous left coronary artery origin from the pulmonary trunk and massive mitral regurgitation. The patient was submitted to surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass: the anomalous coronary artery was implanted in the aorta and the mitral valve repair...

Methods We retrospectively investigated 146 patients (131 men, 16 women; mean age, 67 years) with severe functional mitral valve (MV) insufficiency due to dilated cardiomyopathy that were operated on between 2004 till 2012. 35 pts were in New York Heart Association class IV and 102 were in class III. Most of pts had severe enlarged LV (mean end-diastolic size 73.7±7,1ml and volume 293 ±80ml) wi...

OBJECTIVE Considering the importance of annular dynamics in the valvular and ventricular function, we sought to evaluate the effects of treated pericardial annuloplasty rings on mitral annular dynamics and left-ventricular (LV) function after mitral valve repair. The results were compared with the mitral annular dynamics and LV function in patients with rigid and flexible rings and also in thos...

Objective: Annuloplasty rings are used to treat ischemic mitral regurgitation (IMR), but their exact effects on 3-D geometry of the overall mitral valve complex during acute left ventricular (LV) ischemia remain unknown. Methods: Radiopaque markers were sutured to the mitral leaflet edges, annulus, papillary muscle tips, and ventricle in three groups of sheep. One group served as control (n 1⁄4...