BACKGROUND Haemodynamic performance of heart valve prosthesis can be defined as its ability to fully open and completely close during the cardiac cycle, neither overloading heart work nor damaging blood particles when passing through the valve. In this perspective, global and local flow parameters, valve dynamics and blood damage safety of the prosthesis, as well as their mutual interactions, h...

OBJECTIVES This study sought to evaluate the use of the Direct Flow Medical (DFM) transcatheter heart valve (Direct Flow Medical, Santa Rosa, California) for the treatment of noncalcific pure aortic regurgitation (AR). BACKGROUND The treatment of noncalcific AR has remained a relative contraindication with transcatheter heart valves due to challenges in anchoring devices in the absence of cal...

Seven patients have been described who developed a third heart sound in association with a paravalvar leak around a Starr-Edwards mitral valve prosthesis. These patients had all had the mitral valve cusps, chordae tendineae, and part of the papillary muscles excised. The presence of a third heart sound in them supports the concept of Potain (I900) that the third heart sound arises by vibrations...

Objective: To compare survival and outcome in patients receiving a mechanical or bioprosthetic heart valve prosthesis. Design: Randomised prospective trial. Setting: Tertiary cardiac centre. Patients: Between 1975 and 1979, patients were randomised to receive either a Bjork-Shiley or a porcine prostheses. The mitral valve was replaced in 261 patients, the aortic in 211, and both valves in 61 pa...

To facilitate the radiographic identification of prosthetic heart valves, radiographic silhouettes of various aortic, mitral and tricuspid valve prostheses were analyzed and shematized. Forty different prosthetic valve models (heterograft and mechanical) were obtained from seven domestic manufacturers. Each prosthesis was positioned to approximate the aortic, mitral or tricuspid valve anulus pl...

BACKGROUND Severe peripheral arterial disease may pose a limitation to the applicability of trans-arterial aortic valve implantation in patients who are otherwise candidates. For this reason, transapical aortic valve implantation has been proposed as a possible alternative. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the acute safety and performance of a specially designed delivery system, the CoreValve Tranzap de...

A 78-year-old woman was admitted to our institution with progressive dyspnea. She had previously been diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease and had undergone cardiac surgery for mechanical mitral valve replacement ten years previously. Transesophageal echocardiography revealed blockage of the mechanical prosthesis and the patient was scheduled for surgery, in which a thrombus was removed from ...

Introduction: In vitro hydrodynamic characterization of prosthetic heart valves provides important information regarding their operation, especially if performed by noninvasive techniques of anemometry. Once velocity profiles for each valve are provided, it is possible to compare them in terms of hydrodynamic performance. In this first experimental study using laser doppler anemometry with mech...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility and procedural outcomes with a new self-expanding and repositionable transcatheter heart valve. BACKGROUND Transcatheter aortic valve replacement is a viable option for selected patients with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis. However, suboptimal prosthesis positioning may contribute to paravalvular regurgitation, atriov...

Catheter-based valve implantation techniques are becoming a viable option in various clinical situations to replace difficult redo open heart surgical procedures. This is a report of a first, to our knowledge, successful valve-in-valve (VinV) transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) into a homograft through the transaortic (TAo) access route using an Edwards SAPIEN valve prosthesis (Edwar...