Sinus of Valsalva-right atrial fistulas are abnormal connections between the aorta and the right atrium, and present challenging surgical conditions. An extremely rare etiology of aorto-right atrial fistula is infective endocarditis. This case report presents a 21 year old Caucasian female patient who had native aortic valve Staphylococcus aureus endocarditis complicated by sinus of Valsalva ab...

Aorto-atrial fistulas (AAF) are rare but important pathophysiologic conditions of the aorta and have varied presentations such as acute pulmonary edema, chronic heart failure and incidental detection of the fistula. A variety of mechanisms such as aortic dissection, endocarditis with pseudoaneurysm formation, post surgical scenarios or trauma may precipitate the fistula formation. With increasi...

An aorto-gastric fistula is a catastrophic and rare cause of an upper gastrointestinal bleed. The diagnosis requires a high index of suspicion and expedient management as any delay in each of these component, will be to the detriment of the patient. We report a case of a patient with two episodes of this rare event, with haemodynamic compromise, 15 years after having had a trans-hiatal oesophag...

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) techniques are rapidly evolving, and results of published trials suggest that TAVR is emerging as the standard of care in certain patient subsets and a viable alternative to surgery in others. As TAVR is a relatively new procedure and continues to gain its acceptance, rare procedural complications will continue to appear. Our case is about an 89-yea...

a seven-year-old girl with clinical diagnosis of aortic insufficiency underwent echocardiographic and hemodynamic evaluation and referred for surgery with the same diagnosis. however, at surgery, aorto-ieft ventricular tunnel was found and repaired successfully. review of echocardiogram and catheterization data revealed interesting findings to differentiate this rare entity from congenital aort...

Rita Pancas*, Gonçalo F. Coutinho and Manuel J. Antunes Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, University Hospital of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal * Corresponding author. Hospitais da Universidade de Coimbra, Centro de Cirurgia Cardiotorácica, Praceta Professor Mota Pinto, 3000-075 Coimbra, Portugal. Tel: +351-961-458337; fax: +351-239-829674; e-mail: [email protected] (R. Pancas). Received ...

Laparoscopic vascular surgery has not been widely embraced by vascular surgeons because of the specific technical skills needed in performing vascular anastomosis. Robot assisted vascular surgery has shown the possibility to overcome several limitations of laparoscopic vascular surgery in previous studies. We report two cases of robot assisted aortofemoral bypass grafting for aortoiliac occlusi...

BACKGROUND Intra-thoracic desmoid tumours with mediastinal invasion are very rare. Although rare they have to be taken into account in the differential diagnosis of a thoracic mass and therapeutic options have to be weighted since surgical treatment may require wide excision. CASE PRESENTATION A 48-year-old male diabetic, dyslipidaemic, former heavy smoker with psychiatric illness was operate...

BACKGROUND Coronary artery bypass grafting surgery is an effective treatment modality for patients with severe coronary artery disease. The conduits used during the surgery include both the arterial and venous conduits. Long- term graft patency rate for the internal mammary arterial graft is superior, but the same is not true for the saphenous vein grafts. At 10 years, more than 50% of the vein...