In this update, current guidelines addressing prosthesis selection published by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) are discussed, along with additional data that affect choices in valve prostheses. The case of a 50-year-old man undergoing aortic valve replacement is used to address anticipated operative mortality,...

Due to the increasing number of heart valve diseases, there is an urgent clinical need for off-the-shelf tissue engineered heart valves. While significant progress has been made toward improving the design and performance of both mechanical and tissue engineered heart valves (TEHVs), a human implantable, functional, and viable TEHV has remained elusive. In animal studies so far, the implanted T...

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...

Thrombosis of mechanical heart valve prosthesis is a rare fatal complication after heart valve replacement. This report describes an old female patient with aortic prosthetic valve thrombosis who had a successful fibrinolytic treatment.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the macroscopic model of hydro-mechanical coupling for the case of a porous medium containing isolated cracks or/and vugs . In the development we apply the asymptotic expansions homogenization method. It is shown that the general structure of Biot’s model is the same as in the case of homogeneous medium but the poro-elastic parameters are modified. Two nu...

Hydro-mechanical deep drawing is a process for producing cup shaped parts with the assistance of a pressurized fluid. In the present work, numerical simulation of the conventional and counter pressure deep drawing processes has been done with the help of a finite element method based software. Simulation results were analyzed to study the improvement in drawability by using hydro-mechanical pro...

A series of thermoelectric responsive shape memory hydro-epoxy (H-EP) composites filled with different contents of graphene were developed and characterized. Compared with traditional actuation materials, these novel shape memory composites exhibit attractive properties, such as light weight, large deformation, good processability and high response speed, making them good candidates for actuato...

Aortic valve replacement in the setting of critical aortic valve stenosis with cardiogenic shock is associated with high mortality, yet surgery is the only definitive treatment. We present the case of a patient with critical aortic valve stenosis and cardiogenic shock who received a short period of percutaneous mechanical support and balloon aortic valvuloplasty that resulted in rapid clinical ...

This report describes a patient's self-substitution of nattokinase for the vitamin K antagonist warfarin after aortic valve replacement with a mechanical prosthesis. Nattokinase is an enzyme derived from a popular fermented soybean preparation in Japan (natto), which has fibrinolytic properties and is gaining popularity in nontraditional health journals and nonmedical health websites as an over...

St. Luke’s Hospital is a 436 bed community teaching hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA, performing an average of 750 open heart surgeries yearly by four cardiothoracic surgeons. The type of prosthesis for aortic valve replacement (AVR) chosen is based on durability, safety of postoperative anticoagulation, ease of implantation, and postoperative haemodynamic performance. Surgeons at St Lu...