Mitral valve repair provides substantial advantages over mitral valve replacement in patients with severe mitral regurgitation. However, because of the possibility of persistent regurgitation, an intraoperative technique is needed to provide an immediate and accurate assessment of the adequacy of the repair before closure of the chest. One hundred patients with pure mitral regurgitation were st...

BACKGROUND Despite the established superiority of mitral repair over replacement, its adoption in the treatment of elderly patients has not been uniform, partly because of a lack of robust long-term survival data. We present the long-term survival of Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries undergoing mitral valve repair and replacement over a 10-year period. METHODS AND RESULTS We used the Med...

AIMS Deep clefts are a cause of early failure of mitral valve repair, but it is not known whether clefts represent normal morphology, or whether they occur more frequently in mitral valve prolapse (MVP). METHODS AND RESULTS Deep clefts were defined as indentations extending ≥ 50% of the depth of the mitral valve leaflet. Using trans-oesophageal echo (TOE), 3D zoom images were acquired of the ...

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of coronary artery disease in patients undergoing valve surgery at a tertiary care cardiac centre. METHODS The medical records of 144 consecutive patients who underwent mitral, aortic or dual (mitral and aortic) valve replacement surgery at the Tabba Heart Institue between January 2006 to December 2008 were retrospectively reviewed. All patients underwent...

Extensive mitral annulus calcifications are considered a contraindication for valve surgery. We describe the case of a 76-year-old female with severe mitral and aortic stenosis associated with extensive calcifications of the heart. The patient underwent an open mitroaortic valve replacement using transcatheter aortic valve implantation with an Edwards SAPIEN XT valve (Edwards Lifesciences Corp....

concomitant coronary artery bypass surgery (cabg) in patients undergoing mitral valve replacement (mvr) has been shown to be an important risk factor for hospital mortality. we evaluated preoperative characteristics, postoperative complications, in-hospital mortality rate, and length of stay in hospital for patients undergoing concurrent cabg with mvr. preoperative and postoperative clinical da...

Libman-Sacks endocarditis of the mitral valve was first described by Libman and Sacks in 1924. Currently, the sterile verrucous vegetative lesions seen in Libman-Sacks endocarditis are regarded as a cardiac manifestation of both systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and the antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). Although typically mild and asymptomatic, complications of Libman-Sacks endocarditis may inc...

OBJECTIVES To define the impact of surgical strategy [concomitant mitral valve surgery or isolated aortic valve replacement (AVR)] in patients with moderate secondary mitral regurgitation (MR) at the time of AVR. METHODS From January 1999 to December 2009, 3339 patients underwent AVR of whom 255 had secondary MR >2+ and constituted the study population. Patients were stratified into two group...

INTRODUCTION Degenerative mitral regurgitation is currently the most frequent indication for mitral valve repair. AIM To visualize and assess the mid-term results of mitral valve repair with neochordae implantation, using computed tomography angiography (CTA) imaging. MATERIAL AND METHODS The CTA with ECG gating and without modulation was applied in 10 patients to assess the results of a mi...