The recent rapid development of cardiac surgery now demands accurate diagnosis of the rarer types of congenital heart disease; the exact anatomy of congenital valve stenosis, for example, must be determined. The occurrence of valvar, subvalvar, and supravalvar forms of either aortic or pulmonary stenosis is well known. With respect to congenital mitral stenosis, a rarer cardiac anomaly, we are ...

The recent rapid development of cardiac surgery now demands accurate diagnosis of the rarer types of congenital heart disease; the exact anatomy of congenital valve stenosis, for example, must be determined. The occurrence of valvar, subvalvar, and supravalvar forms of either aortic or pulmonary stenosis is well known. With respect to congenital mitral stenosis, a rarer cardiac anomaly, we are ...

We tested the hypotheses that Doppler echocardiography has a higher accuracy than clinical evaluation in the detection of significant aortic and mitral valvular heart disease and that Doppler echocardiography is highly accurate as compared with cardiac catheterization for the assessment of valvular disease severity. Thus, cardiac catheterization for the assessment of valve lesion severity may b...

BACKGROUND Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) and right ventricular (RV) dysfunction adversely affect outcomes in patients with heart failure or mitral valve disease, but their impact on outcomes in patients with aortic stenosis treated with transcatheter aortic valve replacement has not been well characterized. METHODS AND RESULTS Among 542 patients with symptomatic aortic stenosis treated in the ...

Objective: Evaluate the efficacy of the extended vertical transseptal approach in mitral valve reoperation with a small left atrium. Method: From January 2001 to December 2002, 15 patients with previous mitral operation, small left atrium and atrial fibrillation underwent mitral valve surgery through an extended vertical transseptal incision. There were nine women and six men. Their ages ranged...

Valve interstitial cells (VICs) are responsible for maintaining the structural integrity and dynamic behaviour of the valve. Telocytes (TCs), a peculiar type of interstitial cells, have been recently identified by Popescu's group in epicardium, myocardium and endocardium (visit www.telocytes.com). The presence of TCs has been identified in atria, ventricles and many other tissues and organ, but...

Shone's complex is a rare congenital heart disease consisting of multiple levels of left sided obstructive lesions including supravalvar mitral ring, parachute mitral valve, subaortic stenosis and coarctation of aorta. The present case report describes a case of complete form of Shone's complex that was incidentally detected in an adult.

BACKGROUND The patency of foramen ovale (FO) in fetal circulation is very important, and premature closure of FO could be associated with several pathological conditions. METHODS We report a patient in whom premature closure of FO in fetal life was associated with late clinical onset of mitral valve stenosis and subsequent development of irreversible pulmonary hypertension (PH). RESULTS The...

Although bicuspid aortic valve occurs in an estimated 1% of adults and mitral valve prolapse in an estimated 5% of adults, occurrence of the 2 in the same patient is infrequent. During examination of operatively excised aortic and mitral valves because of dysfunction (stenosis and/or regurgitation), we encountered 16 patients who had congenitally bicuspid aortic valves associated with various t...

A 21-year-old, previously healthy, female presented with complaints of palpitations. The physical examination, ECG and a 24-hour Holter investigation were unremarkable. A transthoracic echocardiogram demonstrated a double orifice mitral valve (DOMV) (Fig. 1). Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging was performed in order to exclude other congenital heart problems (Fig. 2). There was no evidence of m...