Surgical pulmonary vein isolation by ablation as a treatment for atrial fibrillation was first performed in isolation in 1996 at Hospital de Santa Cruz in Portugal, as a complementary therapy to mitral valve surgery in patients with rheumatic mitral valve disease, in order to reduce the morbidity associated with maze surgery. This innovative surgical approach, performed by Queiroz e Melo, repla...

Of seven patients with pulmonary hypertension, two had marked and one had moderate retardation of the echocardiographic anterior mitral valve leaflet closing motion, suggestive of mitral stenosis. In each patient, however, mitral stenosis was excluded by hemodynamic or anatomic criteria. The reason for the abnormal mitral valve motion was considered to be a reduced rate of left ventricular dias...

CONGENITAL stenotic lesions of the mitral valve may be classified into various groups depending on the functional capacity of the left ventricle. In the extreme form, s8vere stenosis or atresia of the mitral valve is associated with hypoplasia of the left ventricle and aorta. Septal defects are usually present and these combinations are lethal in infaincy.i' 2 In the presence of a functioning l...

BACKGROUND This study was performed to determine independent predictors of long-term outcome after percutaneous balloon dilation of congenital pulmonary valve stenosis. Smaller follow-up series of patients after balloon pulmonary valvuloplasty have shown inconsistent results regarding the independent relation between prognostic factors and long-term outcome, as many patient selection and techni...

Correlative angiographic-anatomical studies in 19 cases of pulmonary atresia with infarct ventricular septum showed the following relations between the angiographic appearance of the pulmonary valve and the morphology of the right ventricle. (1) Doming of the pulmonary valve was associated with a nearly normal-sized right ventricle and a wide infundibulum patent to the level of the pulmonary va...

reater advances in the use of percutaneous techniques for he treatment of coronary artery disease and cardiac nonoronary interventions have occurred during the last few ears. Among them, percutaneous techniques for the treatent of stenotic valvular lesions were developed, and their enefits were demonstrated in the treatment of most paients with pulmonary stenosis, rheumatic mitral stenosis, nd ...

T HE PATHOGENESIS of congestive failure is still uncertain. In 1910 Bolton and Starling (I) wrote that the analysis of the factors involved in the production of the disease was rendered difficult by the impossibility of accurately reproducing these states in animals. Since that time numerous methods have been tried to precipitate congestive failure in dogs. The attempts have met with limited su...

OBJECTIVES Transannular patching is used to relieve significant pulmonary annular stenosis during tetralogy of Fallot repair. Although recent literature has focused on the deleterious effects of pulmonary regurgitation, inadequate relief of stenosis may increase postoperative mortality and the re-intervention rate. Patching criteria based on pulmonary annular z-scores are ambiguous because of t...

Correlative angiographic-anatomical studies in 19 cases of pulmonary atresia with intact ventricular septum showed the following relations between the angiographic appearance of the pulmonary valve and the morphology of the right ventricle. (1) Doming of the pulmonary valve was associated with a nearly normal-sized right ventricle and a wide infundibulum patent to the level of the pulmonary val...

BACKGROUND Transcatheter pulmonary valve (TPV) replacement is an emerging therapy intended to restore pulmonary valve function in patients with right ventricular outflow tract conduit dysfunction; the impact of this technique on ventricular strain and synchrony is not known. METHODS AND RESULTS Cardiac magnetic resonance and ECG data acquired at 1 center as part of the US Melody TPV trial wer...