A 71-yr-old male patient with three vessel coronary artery disease underwent a coronary artery bypass graft. The patient was found to have a large pericardial defect at the apex of the heart that measured approximately 18 cm in circumference. The edge of the pericardial defect impinged on the epicardial coronary arteries. The left phrenic nerve descended via the dorsal boundary of the pericardi...

Surgical closure of ventricular septal defect is safe, however, the inherent risks associated with cardiopulmonary bypass and the potential early and late postsurgical complications including complete heart block, arrhythmias, postpericardiotomy syndrome, and rare deaths have led physicians to prefer transcatheter occlusion technique for closure of such defects. The use of Amplatzer muscular ve...

The author describes the simultaneous treatment of pectus excavatum and congenital intracardiac defect (atrial septal defect) represented by the interatrial foramen secundum. An 8-year-old boy, with clinical and echocardiography diagnosis of atrial septal defect associated with pectus excavatum was referred to a simultaneous surgical treatment of both abnormalities. The simultaneous surgical tr...

The field of pediatric cardiac interventions has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number and type of procedures performed. We review the most common procedures performed in the catheter laboratory. Lesions are divided according to their physiological characteristics into left-to-right shunting lesions (atrial septal defect, patent ductus arteriosus, ventricular septal defect), right-to-left...

ease (RHD). Certain forms of congenital heart disease such as tetralogy of Fallot, small ventricular septal defect, and aortic stenosis are at particular risk for BE. Following BE, patients with ventricular septal defect and tetralogy of Fallot have less morbidity and higher survival rates than children with aortic outflow lesions. Over the entire time period, alpha Streptococcus is the most co...

We present the case of a 45-year-old woman with recent onset of dipnea and atrial fibrillation. She was referred to our center for treatment of an associated ventricular septal defect. Echocardiography confirmed the presence of a membranous ventricular septal defect, but also showed signs of constriction. Cardiac computed tomography displayed a severe, diffuse calcified pericarditis. We show th...