New antiplatelet agents and prosthetic heart valves

New antiplatelet agents and prosthetic heart valves.

Sir, Despite advances in prosthetic valve design, patients who undergo valve replacement are at risk of arterial thromboembolism and valve thrombosis. We present four cases where new antiplatelet agents have been used. A 61-year-old man with aortic valve endocarditis underwent early mechanical valve replacement. He developed mitral regurgitation and an aorticright-atrial fistula requiring surgi...

Prosthetic Aortic Heart Valves

In this review, the anatomy and structure of the aortic valve and its prostheses are comprehensively discussed. Cardiac anatomy and function, human heart valves and their prostheses are also extensively discussed. The current status of prosthetic heart valves along with the next generation of these devices is broadly deliberated. Ather promising options such astranscatheter technologies (percut...

Prosthetic heart valves.

The first prosthetic valve was implanted by Hufnagel in 1952 in a patient with aortic insufficiency. Since then, prosthetic valves have evolved into various mechanical and bioprosthetic shapes and sizes. Despite the excitement surrounding the current development of prosthetic heart valves, surgically implanted valves remain the mainstay of current practice, and this article discusses the hemody...

Prosthetic heart valves and pregnancy.

To the Editor: Pregnant women with mechanical heart valves are an ultrahigh-risk group, in whom all anticoagulant options pose maternal and/or fetal risks. It is unclear why the authors of the recent update1 selected 4 studies, neither the most recent nor of the highest quality, to give a warfarin embryopathy rate of 1.6%. This anomaly rate is not supported by evidence in their Table 1 (3.9% of...

stress echocardiography in prosthetic heart valves