surgery and to enhance our understanding of the pathophysiology of mitral stenosis. Although surgery produced a significant increase in calculated mitral valve area, the degree of improvement varied markedly. The younger patients had the greater increase in mitral valve area. The change in cardiac index and pulmonary vascular resistance correlated well with the change in mitral valve area. Only...

A 56-year-old patient with severe pulmonary hypertension developed severe tricuspid regurgitation, right-sided heart failure, and congestive hepatopathy. She was transferred for possible lung transplant and/or tricuspid valve surgery. Clinical and echocardiographic assessment provided confidence that acute tricuspid valve failure was responsible for the decompensation and that tricuspid valve r...

A 5-day-old female Holstein calf was necropsied because of lethargy, recumbency and anorexia. At necropsy, multiple gross defects were evident in several organs, including unclosed sutures of skull bones, asymmetrical orbits, doming of the skull bones, hydrocephalus, hydranencephaly, cleft palate, brachygnathia, ventricular septal defect, mitral valve dysplasia and rudimentary lungs. On microsc...

1 also called the pulmonary autograft procedure, involves replacement of the diseased aortic valve with the patient’s own pulmonary valve (autograft) and implantation of a biological valve (homograft) in the pulmonary position. It was first described and pioneered by Mr. Donald Ross in 1967 in London. The procedure was popularised in the 1980s when homografts became widely available on both sid...

BACKGROUND Absent pulmonary valve with ventricular septal defect is a rare cardiac malformation. The aim of our study is to specify the anatomic characteristics and the clinical and echocardiographic features of this cardiac malformation and to discuss its management. METHODS We report 8 cases of absent pulmonary valve with ventricular septal defected collected over a period of 24 years. The ...

Uncorrected, long-term pulmonary regurgitation leads to right ventricular dilatation and dysfunction in a significant percentage of patients. We used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) before and after surgery to assess the effect of pulmonary valve replacement with the Medtronic Freestyle bioprosthesis on right ventricular function and volume in nine patients with pulmonary regurgitation or sten...

BACKGROUND Since 2000, transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement has steadily advanced. However, the available prosthetic valves are restricted to bioprosthesis which have defects like poor durability. Polymeric heart valve is thought as a promising alternative to bioprosthesis. In this study, we introduced a novel polymeric transcatheter pulmonary valve and evaluated its feasibility and safety...

Premature opening of the pulmonary valve (opening independent of atrial or ventricular systole) was originally described in a case of sinus of Valsalva rupture into the right atrium. Since that time we have observed five additional cases in which the pulmonary valve opened prematurely. Entities encountered included: 1) constrictive pericarditis; 2) Loeffler's endocarditis; 3) Ebstein's anomaly ...

BACKGROUND The use of a pulmonary autograft for rereplacement of the aortic valve has both potential advantages and disadvantages. This study details the early results of a subset of patients enrolled in a prospective randomized trial comparing pulmonary autografts and aortic homografts who have had previous aortic valve replacements. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 47 patients who had undergo...

Despite recent renewed interest in the detection of tricuspid valve regurgitation by echocardiographic and Doppler techniques, little morphologic information is available on dysfunctioning tricuspid valves. This report describes 45 necropsy patients with clinical and morphologic evidence of pure (no element of stenosis) tricuspid regurgitation and provides morphometric observations (anular circ...