A total of 14 cases of infective endocarditis (IE) in children aged 6 months to 10 years were seen from December 1987 to December 1992 at the pediatric unit of Ayatollah Taleghani Medical Center. The majority of patients (12 of 14) were between 5 and 10 years of age. Acyanotic congenital heart disease was known to preexist in 78.6% and rheumatic valvular heart disease in 21.4% of cases. Or...

Table 1 Reported cases of well functioning mechanical valve without anticoagulation Reference Mean age n Type of Position Mean follow-up Treatment with Peak (years) valve (n) of valve period without anticoagulation gradient anticoagulation (months) across (years) valve thrombotic prophylaxis are from non-randomized case series without controls w2x. Uncomplicated functioning without anticoagulat...

BACKGROUND Patients with prosthetic heart valves are a challenge to any anesthesiologist due to the risk of infective endocarditis, bleeding and thrombosis. CASE PRESENTATION We present anesthetic management of a 58-year-old Indian lady with a prosthetic (mechanical) heart valve who underwent hemireplacement arthroplasty. CONCLUSION Patients with prosthetic heart valves, especially those wi...

proper education and notification of patients undergoing heart valve replacement is of paramount importance. the past decade has witnessed a growing interest in the use of modern, advanced technologies in medicine and patient education. this study aimed to introduce an education-notification application for patients undergoing heart valve replacement. research was carried out in two phases of s...

BACKGROUND Patients with mechanical heart valves require life-long anticoagulation. We report here the first large and comparative series of consecutive patients anticoagulated with low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) after mechanical heart valve replacement. METHODS AND RESULTS In this comparative, nonrandomized study, 208 consecutive patients who underwent a single or double heart valve rep...

Introduction. Valvular heart disease is a common diagnosis worldwide, with many of these patients eventually needing an operative intervention. There are significant limitations to existing heart valve replacements, including their inability to grow with patients, a life-time anticoagulation therapy with mechanical valves, and progressive tissue degeneration with bioscaffolds. Tissue-engineerin...

Tissue engineered scaffolds have emerged as a promising solution for heart valve replacement because of their potential for regeneration. However, traditional heart valve tissue engineering has relied on resource-intensive, cell-based manufacturing, which increases cost and hinders clinical translation. To overcome these limitations, in situ tissue engineering approaches aim to develop scaffold...

BACKGROUND Heart valve tissue engineering is a promising strategy to overcome the lack of autologous growing replacements, particularly for the repair of congenital malformations. Here, we present a novel concept using human prenatal progenitor cells as new and exclusive cell source to generate autologous implants ready for use at birth. METHODS AND RESULTS Human fetal mesenchymal progenitors...