The 'St Jude' gambit

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Elliptic st. jude bileaflet mechanical heart valves

St. Jude Medical (SJM) bileaflet mechanical valves were approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1977. The SJM valve design consists of two semicircular leaflets which pivot on hinges. Compared to other mechanical heart valve prostheses such as ball and cage and tilting disk prosthetic valves, it provides good central flow, the leaflets open completely, and the pressure drop across the v...

Long-term outcomes after St. Jude Medical mechanical valve implantation.

patient-year), major bleeding events (1.0%/patient-year), and aortic valve reoperation (0.26%/patient-year). They also reported that valve-related death was the most common cause of death (26.8%) and that the rates of freedom from valve-related death were 96.2%, 92.7%, 88.8%, and 86.6% at 5, 10, 15, and 20 years, respectively. These results compare favorably with the findings of previous report...

Flow-induced platelet activation in a St. Jude mechanical heart valve, a trileaflet polymeric heart valve, and a St. Jude tissue valve.

Polymer heart valves have been under investigation since the 1960s, but their success has been hampered by an overall lack of durability mainly due to calcification of the leaflets and a relatively high rate of thromboembolic complications. A new polymer (Quatromer) trileaflet design was tested for its thrombogenic potential and was compared to that of existing prosthetic heart valves routinely...

The Pleistocene re-wilding gambit.

Re-wilding parts of North America with exotic Old-World species is an exciting but controversial conservation proposal hijacked by opinions over appropriate conservation baselines and details of implementation. Debate over its worth has become partisan. Here, I summarize the multifaceted issues surrounding Pleistocene re-wilding and edge debate from hazy conceptual arguments to empirical questi...