All patients undergoing heart surgery experience a certain amount of nonspecific myocardial injury documented by the release of cardiac biomarkers and associated with poor outcome. We investigated the role of unipolar radiofrequency ablation of atrial fibrillation on the release of cardiac biomarkers in 71 patients undergoing mitral valve surgery and concomitant left atrial ablation case-matche...

AIM While the incidence of rheumatic heart disease has declined dramatically over the last half-century, the number of valve surgeries has not changed. This study was undertaken to define the most common type of valvular heart disease requiring surgery today, and determine in-hospital surgical mortality and length-of-stay (LOS) for isolated aortic or mitral valve surgery in a United States tert...

OBJECTIVES This investigation sought to determine the feasibility of a novel method of a percutaneous mitral valve repair. BACKGROUND Percutaneous mitral valve repair has emerged as an alternative therapy for patients with functional mitral regurgitation. However, current methods that rely on cannulation of the coronary sinus may not result in direct reduction of the mitral annulus area due t...

BaIlon mitral valvuloplasty and closed mitral valve conunissurotomy were performed in 450 and 127 patients, respectively. Also, 254 patients with severe mitral stenosis were enrolled in a prospective randomized trial comparing the two procedures. Immediately after balloon mitral valvuloplasty, mean left atrial pressure was 11.38±3.54 mmHg, transmitral valve gradient was 1.8±2 mmHg, and mit...

The edge-to-edge technique is a versatile procedure for mitral valve repair. Its technical simplicity has been the prerequisite for the development of a number of transcatheter technologies to perform percutaneous mitral valve repair. The evolution from a standard open heart surgical to percutaneous procedure involved the application of the technique in minimally invasive robotic surgery and di...

lar contractile function in patients with long-term mitral regurgitation and normal ejection fraction. J Am Coll Cardiol 1993;22:239–250. 21. Rosenhek R, Rader F, Klaar U, Gabriel H, Krejic M, Kalbeck D, Schemper M, Maurer G, Baumgartner H. Outcome of watchful waiting in asymptomatic mitral regurgitation. Circulation 2006;113:2238–2244. 22. Zoghbi WA, Enriquez-Sarano M, Foster E, Grayburn PA, K...

BACKGROUND Mitral valve surgery in older adults carries with it substantial morbidity and mortality risks, yet there are a paucity of national surveillance data. Therefore, we sought to determine trends in hospitalization rate, readmission, and mortality among Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients undergoing mitral valve surgery. METHODS AND RESULTS Inpatient Medicare standard analytic file...

Concomitant aortic and mitral valve replacement or concomitant aortic valve replacement and mitral repair can be a challenge for the cardiac surgeon: in particular, because of their structure and design, two bioprosthetic heart valves or an aortic valve prosthesis and a rigid mitral ring can interfere at the level of the mitroaortic junction. Therefore, when a mitral bioprosthesis or a rigid mi...

OBJECTIVES Anatomical repair seems an ideal method for the surgical treatment of the anomalous left coronary artery arising from the pulmonary artery (ALCAPA) in infancy. The medium-term outcome has been investigated for infants with ALCAPA following the restoration of a dual-coronary arterial circulation. METHODS Between April 1995 and July 2012, 23 infants with a median age of 4 months unde...

BACKGROUND Mitral valve surgery is the standard of care for patients with symptomatic mitral regurgitation (MR) or asymptomatic MR with evidence of left ventricular dysfunction or dilation. Whether an endovascular approach to repair can offer comparable effectiveness with improved safety remains to be determined in randomized trials. STUDY DESIGN The EVEREST II Trial is a multicenter, randomi...