BACKGROUND Aortic valve stenosis is one of the most common heart diseases in older patients. Nowadays, surgical aortic valve replacement is the 'gold standard' treatment for this pathology and the most implanted prostheses are biological ones. The three most implanted bovine bioprostheses are the Trifecta valve (St. Jude Medical, Minneapolis, MN, USA), the Mitroflow valve (Sorin Group, Saluggia...

A 78-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of ischemic stroke with regressive right hemiplegia. Two years earlier, she had undergone a supra-annular mitral valve replacement with a porcine bioprosthesis (St Jude Medical Epic No. 27, St. Jude Medical, Inc., St. Paul, Minn). Because of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, she had received vitamin K antagonist treatment since the surgery....

BACKGROUND: Communication between the left ventricle and right atrium, termed a Gerbode ventricular septal defect (VSD), was first described in 1838 later explained with varying etiologies, including congenital acquired forms. Most of LV-RA shunts are either postoperative or infective etiology. Among these endocarditis is rare cause, echocardiography mainstay its diagnosis clinical management. ...

Patients implanted with mechanical heart valves (MHV) or with ventricular assist devices that use MHV require mandatory lifelong anticoagulation for secondary stroke prevention. We recently developed a novel Device Thrombogenicity Emulator (DTE) methodology that interfaces numerical and experimental approaches to optimize the thrombogenic performance of the device and reduce the bleeding risk a...

The first artificial heart valves to be used clinically were mechanical devices and the continuous research and development over the last 25 years led to the modern prostheses which offer simplicity and safety of implantation, haemodynamic efficiency, lower rates of thromboembolism and excellent durability. After the old Starr-Edwards ball-and-cage valve and the Björk-Shiley tilting-disk valve,...

OBJECTIVE Mechanical heart valves can cause thromboembolic complications, possibly due to abnormal flow patterns that produce turbulence downstream of the valve. The objective of this study was to investigate whether three different bileaflet valve designs would exhibit clinically relevant differences in downstream turbulent stresses. METHODS Three bileaflet mechanical heart valves (Medtronic...