A ventricular septal defect (VSD) is one or more holes in the wall that separates the right and left ventricles of the heart. VSD is one of the most common congenital (present from birth) heart defects. Many types of VSDs have been reported, including congenital VSDs, post-infarction VSDs (1), and post-traumatic VSDs (2). Furthermore, there are four types of congenital VSDs; perimembranous VSD ...

We describe the interdisciplinary management of a 34-year-old woman with dilated cardiomyopathy three months postpartum on a cardiac biventricular assist device (BVAD) as bridge to heart transplantation with delayed onset of intracardial shunting and subsequent hypoxemia due to massive pulmonary embolism. After emergency surgical embolectomy pulmonary function was highly compromised (PaO2/FiO2 ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the initial clinical experience with the Helex septal occluder for percutaneous closure of atrial septal defects. METHODS Ten patients underwent the procedure, 7 patients with ostium secundum atrial septal defects (ASD) with hemodynamic repercussions and 3 patients with pervious foramen ovale (PFO) and a history of stroke. Mean age was 33.8 years and mean weight was 55.4...

BACKGROUND Transcatheter occlusion has been applied to treat ostium secundum atrial septal defect (OS ASD) since 1997. During the clinical practice, several postoperative complications including arrhythmia have been reported. This study aimed to evaluate the value of the ratio of atrial septal occluder (ASO) versus atrial septal length (ASL) for predicting arrhythmia occurrence after transcathe...

BACKGROUND Percutaneous transcatheter closure of patent foramen ovale (PFO) in cryptogenic stroke is an alternative to medical therapy. There is still debate on different outcome for each currently available device. The impact of residual shunting after PFO-closure on recurrent arterial embolism is unknown. - AIMS (i) To evaluate the prevalence of residual interatrial shunting after device- c...

Surgical closure of ventricular septal defect is safe, however, the inherent risks associated with cardiopulmonary bypass and the potential early and late postsurgical complications including complete heart block, arrhythmias, postpericardiotomy syndrome, and rare deaths have led physicians to prefer transcatheter occlusion technique for closure of such defects. The use of Amplatzer muscular ve...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES Today, the transcatheter treatment of atrial septal defects using an occluding device is a safe and effective therapeutic approach. Recently, intracardiac echocardiography has been developed as an alternative to transesophageal echocardiography for guiding these procedures. We describe our experience with intracardiac echocardiography during the percutaneous closure ...

AIM To evaluate the safety and efficacy of transcatheter closure of secundum atrial septal defects (ASD) with the Amplatzer septal occluder. METHODS 236 consecutive patients with a significant ASD (age 6 months to 46 years, median 5 years; body weight 6.5-79 kg, median 18 kg) were considered for transcatheter closure with the Amplatzer septal occluder; 18 patients with defects that were too l...