Hemorrhage in the atrioventricular conduction system and myocardial necrosis commonly occur in the first week after valve replacement. Later, thrombosis on the prosthesis and infarcts in other organs become important but developing or persistent myocardial damage continuously menaces. Occlusion of small vessels, especially by embolism of foreign material, may contribute to the development of th...

up (up to eight years) was obtained in 153 patients (95%). A total of 34 patients (22%) died during the follow-up period. Including the hospital mortality, the actuarial su.vival rate of our patients with SmeloffCutter prosthesis was 0.69 after the fifth year and 0.611 after the eighth year of follow-up. This is similar to the actuarial survival rate of patients with Starr-Edwards prosthesis bu...

Abnormalities in the silastic poppets of cardiac valve prostheses have been detected with increasing frequency. Ball variance can cause serious mechanical dysfunction of the prosthesis and can result in sudden death. Contour sound spectrograms were recorded on 12 patients with ball variance confirmed by operation and 25 controls. In ball variance the frequency of the aortic opening sound at the...

The use of echocardiography, phonocardiography, and spectroanalysis has enhanced the ability to detect prosthetic valve dysfunction even before the onset of symptoms in many patients. Reduction in the intensity of the opening and closing clicks and the appearance of new murmurs have been the most frequently reported observations in predicting prosthetic valve dysfunction. Simultaneous echocardi...