Atrial septal defect (ASD) is the most frequently diagnosed congenital heart disease in adulthood. Along with the recent evolvement of therapeutic catheterization, transcatheter closure has become the treatment of choice in most secundum type ASDs in children and adults. However, clinical decision and technical details may be influenced by special circumstances including complex morphology of t...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the initial clinical experience with the Helex septal occluder for percutaneous closure of atrial septal defects. METHODS Ten patients underwent the procedure, 7 patients with ostium secundum atrial septal defects (ASD) with hemodynamic repercussions and 3 patients with pervious foramen ovale (PFO) and a history of stroke. Mean age was 33.8 years and mean weight was 55.4...

BACKGROUND There is controversy about the benefit of surgical correction of an atrial septal defect (ASD) in patients over 60 years old. The purpose of this study was to determine whether surgical treatment is beneficial in those 60 years of age or older. MATERIALS AND METHODS We reviewed the clinical course of 57 patients (mean age: 63.54±5.59 years) diagnosed with an isolated secundum ASD a...

BACKGROUND Atrial septal defect (ASD) accounts for 10% of all congenital heart lesions and represent the third most congenital cardiac defect seen in adults. Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) is an important regulator of the sodium and volume homeostasis. This study was designed to investigate the changes in plasma ANP concentrations and three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) measurements of c...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether transthoracic three dimensional echocardiography is an accurate non-invasive technique for defining the morphology of atrial septal defects (ASD). METHODS In 34 patients with secundum ASD, mean (SD) age 20 (17) years (14 male, 20 female), the measurements obtained from three dimensional echocardiography were compared to those obtained from magnetic resonance ima...

BACKGROUND Atrial septal defect (ASD) flow can be measured indirectly by velocity-encoded cardiovascular magnetic resonance (veCMR) of the pulmonary artery and aorta. Imaging the secundum ASD en face could potentially enable direct flow measurement and provide valuable information about ASD size, shape, location, and proximity to other structures. METHODS AND RESULTS Forty-four patients refer...

Results After median sternotomy and vertical incision of the pericardium, standard aortic and bicaval venous cannulation was carried out. Following the cross-clamping of the aorta antegrade blood cardioplegia was introduced. Right atriotomy was done. ASD occluder device was detected within the left atrium settled on the mitral valve which was observed through 50 x 25 mm fossa ovalis type secund...

Cardiac papillary fibroelastomas (PFs) are rare cardiac tumors (1). They may be asymptomatic or may present with embolic phenomena (2). To the best of our knowledge, only a few cases of PF associated with congenital heart disease (CHD) have been previously reported (3-6). Here, we present three cases of PF. The first two cases of PF are associated with ostium secundum-type atrial septal defect ...

BACKGROUND Patients with atrial septal defects (ASD) are often misdiagnosed as asthma patients and accordingly receive erroneous bronchodilator treatment. In order to characterise their symptoms of dyspnoea to explain this clinical observation, we investigated the prevalence of asthma-like symptoms in patients with secundum ASD who then underwent successful percutaneous closure. METHODS A tot...

OBJECTIVE To examine whether transcatheter closure of secundum atrial septal defect (ASD) with the Amplatzer septal occluder leads to more myocardial injury in children than in adults. DESIGN In a prospective study with children and adults cardiac troponin I (cTnI) serum concentrations were determined by immunoassay (AxSYM, Abbott Laboratories) before, during, and up to 20 months after surgic...