Open heart surgery in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) increases the risk of bleeding and infection. We document a 78-year-old female with severe aortic valve stenosis and MDS who underwent aortic valve replacement with stentless porcine prosthesis. Perioperatively, a transfusion of red blood cells (RBCs) and an infusion of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) were needed f...

Surgery for heart diseases during pregnancy, especially necessitating cardiopulmonary bypass, is believed to trigger maternal and fetal risks and should be performed only when medical therapy has been unsuccessful to alleviate the cardiac decompensation. A 33-year-old pregnant woman in her 33rd week of gestation was admitted to our hospital. She had rheumatic mitral valvular stenosis and had un...

T he first successful heart valve replacements were carried out in 1960 with the use of mechanical prostheses.1-3 Because of the risk of throm-boembolism that is inherent to all mechanical prosthe-ses and the hazards of continuous anticoagulation, fewer thrombogenic tissue valves were developed.4,5 In the early 1960s, homograft replacement of the aortic valve was reported,6'7 and shortly therea...

BACKGROUND As the prognosis of women with prosthetic heart valves improves, an increasing number are contemplating and undertaking pregnancy. Accurate knowledge of perinatal outcomes is essential, assisting counseling and guiding care. The aims of this study were to assess outcomes in a contemporary population of women with heart valve prostheses undertaking pregnancy and to compare outcomes fo...

Recently, there have been more reports of cardiac valve infections due to the increasing number of intravenous (IV) drug abusers and chronic renal failure patients. Among cardiac valves, tricuspid valve is most commonly affected in the course of endocarditis. Appropriate management of these patients is a challenging and controversial issue in the field of cardiac surgery. Treatment options in s...

A 64-year-old woman was admitted for dyspnea at rest and orthopnea. She had a mitral valve Starr-Edwards prosthesis implanted in 1975 for rheumatic mitral valve disease and was in permanent atrial fibrillation ever since. Chest x-ray (postero-anterior view) showed a massively enlarged cardiac silhouette with a cardiothoracic index of 0.90 and calcified contours of the right heart border, extend...

A 60 year-old woman with rheumatic mitral stenosis underwent re-replacement of Cross- Jones caged lens mitral valve prosthesis, 36 years after valve implantation. In 1968, she underwent mitral commissurotomy. In 1992, she had a stroke, and in July 2009 echocardiography revealed the malfunction of the prosthesis with pannus and reduced mitral prosthetic area < 1.0 cm(2) with the elevated transpr...

OBJECTIVES With the increase in life expectancy occurred in recent decades, it has been noted the concomitant increase in the prevalence of aortic stenosis and degenerative disease of atherosclerotic coronary artery. This study aims to evaluate the influence of atherosclerotic coronary artery disease in patients with critical aortic stenosis undergoing isolated or combined implant valve prosthe...

This article summarizes the long-term clinical results of the Food and Drug Administration-approved heart valves, provides current updates to the objective performance criteria (OPC) used to evaluate new heart valve prostheses, and documents the steps that the International Organization for Standardization Committee used to arrive at the updated OPC. Data were extracted from 19 Food and Drug Ad...

Transcatheter implantation of aortic valve prostheses is being performed with increasing frequency in patients with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis who are at high surgical risk. Either a transfemoral or a transapical approach is employed. Complications related to the procedure are relatively uncommon, but they provide information that is very useful for broadening our knowledge of the patho...