Early diagnosis and treatment of prosthetic valve endocarditis (PVE) is important because it has a high mortality rate. We report a case of PVE which was difficult to diagnose. A 36-year-old man, who had undergone an aortic valve replacement (AVR) 7 years prior, was hospitalized with a high fever of unknown origin. We could not detect a stuck valve, vegetations or abscesses using echocardiograp...

In this case we illustrate our experience with transapical minimal invasive aortic valve replacement in a patient who previously underwent mitral valve replacement. The implantation did not interfere with the existing prosthesis and could even be used as a further landmark, helping height positioning of the aortic valve.

Background In contrast to surgical aortic valve replacement pre procedural assessment of aortic, aortic annulus diameter and prosthesis size is essential for successful percutaneous interventional valve therapy. Among different imaging modalities multislice-computed tomography (MSCT) and transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) are routinely used for patient screening. We sought to evaluate the d...

Giant cell aoritis occurred in a 25-year-old woman, with absent pulses in the left arm and severe aortic regurgitation from dilatation of the valvar annulus. The aortic valve was replaced by a Starr-Edwards prosthesis, and the patient was treated with steroids. Five years later, she continues asymptomatic and haemodynamically stable. The left brachial and radial pulses have returned.

The study was carried out on 10 swine of 20-30 kg body weight. Five animals were assigned to each of 2 groups. An aneurysm of the abdominal aorta was created experimentally in animals from the first and second study group. After 4 weeks, animals from the second group were subject to aneurysm repair using an aortic prosthesis. During the experiment, we measured the myoelectric activity of the mu...

A 76-year old female, was admitted in our cardiac surgery clinic to perform surgical aortic valve replacement due to a severe aortic regurgitation with symptoms of congestive heart failure. Her past medical history included moderately impaired renal function (GFR 48 mL/min) and arterial hypertension.  The thoracic-CT scan revealed a serious calcification of the entire thoracic aorta (Figure 1)...