The fate is described of 11 patients who had a stored pulmonary valve homograft mounted on a frame or in a Dacron jacket used for mitral valve replacement. Mitral regurgitation due to holes in the attenuated cusps occurred in nine by one year, requiring re-operation or causing death. Only one patient remains well with moderate mitral regurgitation after two years. Since January 1967, 118 patien...

Percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation (PPVI) is now an accepted alternative option to conventional surgery for patients with dysfunctional conduits between the right ventricle and pulmonary artery. PPVI will reduce the total number of repeat operations in such patients. However, surgery remains the primary option in postoperative tetralogy of Fallot patients with severe pulmonary regurgitat...

Sixty patients with pulmonary regurgitation were studied by the pulsed Doppler technique combined with two-dimensional and M-mode echocardiography. Patients with pulmonary regurgitation had abnormal Doppler signals just below the pulmonic valve in the right ventricular outflow tract in diastole on the two-dimensional image. These signals were considered to indicate the regurgitant flow. There a...

Background/Introduction Replacement of the aortic valve or aortic root with a pulmonary autograft (Ross procedure) and replacement of the pulmonary valve with a pulmonary allograft or xenograft and is now a widely used technique for the treatment of aortic valve disease in the children and young adult. Excellent short and midterm results have been demonstrated but there is continuing concern ab...

The surgical management of functional tricuspid regurgitation is controversial. Functional tricuspid regurgitation is common in patients with aortic and mitral valve disease, particularly in the presence of pulmonary hypertension. The high incidence and reversibility of functional tricuspid regurgitation are due to the unique compliance of the thin right ventricular wall: modest increases in ri...

The Ross operation, a procedure of replacement of the diseased aortic valve with an autologous pulmonary valve, has many advantages such as no need for anticoagulation therapy and similar valve function and growth potential as native valves. However secondary aortic disease has emerged as a significant complication and indication for reoperation. We report a 48-year-old woman who had Ross opera...

FEBRUARY 2004 I ENDOVASCULAR TODAY I 31 D uring the last 2 decades, percutaneous endovascular therapies have revolutionized the treatment of coronary artery disease. However, the development and dissemination of percutaneous approaches to heart valve disease have been less rapid. Whereas rheumatic mitral stenosis and congenital aortic stenosis are effectively managed by balloon valvuloplasty in...

Abstract A 33-year-old female patient with advanced idiopathic pulmonary artery hypertension underwent bilateral lung transplantation. The postsurgical course was complicated by prolonged mechanical ventilation and acute hypoxemia with recurrent episodes of pulmonary edema. An echocardiogram revealed improved right-sided pressures along with a dilated left atrium, a structurally normal mitral v...

PURPOSE To evaluate the capability of bright-blood cine MR to directly visualize the leaflets of the valve replacement in pulmonary position following Ross operation. MATERIAL AND METHODS Long and short axis views of the pulmonary valve were obtained in 10 normal subjects and 14 patients after Ross operation. Valve morphology and function were analyzed and signal-to-noise (SNR) and contrast-t...

INTRODUCTION The Venus p‑valve (MedTech, Shanghai, China) is a self-expanding percutaneous heart valve designed to be implanted in a native patched right ventricle outflow tract. The worldwide clinical experience with this valve is just beginning and the results have so far been encouraging. We present our initial early experience implanting the Venus p‑valve in the native right ventricle outfl...