Current guidelines necessitate varying degrees of long-term anticoagulation in patients with mechanical heart valve(s) to prevent thrombotic and embolic complications. We describe a patient with a functioning aortic mechanical valve without anticoagulation for 23 years. A 68-year-old man had an aortic valve (St Jude Medical) replacement in 1984. His native valve was incompetent from infective e...

BACKGROUND Noninvasive assessment of functionally stenotic small-diameter aortic mechanical prostheses is complicated by theoretical constraints relating to the hemodynamic relevance of Doppler-derived transprosthetic gradients. To establish the utility of Doppler echocardiography for evaluation of these valves, 20-mm Medtronic Hall and 19-mm St Jude prostheses were studied in vitro and in vivo...

C. M. Hillenbrand, R. B. Loeffler, M. McCarville, R. Song, E. Hansbury, M. Rieman, N. Mortier, M. P. Smeltzer, C-S. Li, F. Hoffer, L. Kun, R. Ware, and J. Hankins Radiological Sciences, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, United States, Hematology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, United States, Biostatistics, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN...

1Department of Computational Biology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee 38105, USA 2Department of Pathology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee 38105, USA 3Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 4Division of Hematology-Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, USA 5Departement of Pathology, I...

We report two patients with a history of prior mitral valve and aortic valve replacement with St. Jude prosthetic valves, who were referred for repeat valve replacement after noninvasive assessment was suggestive of prosthetic valve malfunction. Both patients were managed medically after evaluation with direct left ventricular apical puncture revealed normal hemodynamics in the first and mild a...

BACKGROUND 112 patients who received small and medium sized St. Jude Regent heart valves (19-25 mm) at 7 Scandinavian centers were studied between January 2003 and February 2005 to obtain non-invasive data regarding the hemodynamic performance at rest and during Dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) testing one year after surgery. MATERIAL AND METHODS 46 woman and 66 men, aged 61.8 ± 9.7 (...

A 59-year-old male was referred for surgery resulting from a paravalvular leak at the mitral position. The patient underwent his first mitral valve replacement with a Bjork-Shiley valve 33 years before this situation arose. He underwent his second mitral valve replacement with a St. Jude Medical mechanical prosthesis for valve thrombosis 10 years later. Serial echocardiography had always shown ...