introduction brucella endocarditis, although an uncommon complication of brucellosis, is the main cause of the mortality related to this disease. the best therapy is a combination of antibiotic administration with valve replacement. after treatment of the first episode of endocarditis, new infection may be occurred as a relapse or reinfection. case presentation in this report, we described a pa...

A 59-year-old male who had undergone aortic and mitral valve replacement with Starr-Edwards ball valves 27 years ago was admitted to our hospital for hemolytic anemia and heart failure. Echocardiography revealed prosthetic valve failure with a high-pressure gradient and small effective orifice area. The Starr-Edwards ball valves were successfully replaced with bileaflet mechanical valves. The e...

Whether antithrombotic therapy in elderly patients differs from that in younger populations depends on whether the risk for such bleeding differs in the elderly. Regarding long-term therapy with warfarin derivatives, evidence shows that there is a difference. The anticoagulation response to warfarin is exaggerated with advancing age. This article discusses antithrombotic therapies for valvular ...

Twenty-six major cardiovascular centers participated in a cooperative study of all cases of infective endocarditis occurring during a single calendar year to obtain an overview of infective endocarditis. The study was designed to learn which patients appear to be at highest risk to develop this infection after palliative or reparative cardiovascular surgery. Of 278 patients developing infective...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The underlying embolic material detected by transcranial Doppler ultrasound in patients with prosthetic heart valves remains unknown. We undertook this study to evaluate the relation between the number of Doppler emboli signals and the activity of the coagulation system. METHODS Patients with various types of prosthetic valves (n = 120) and patients in atrial fibrillati...

Pregnancy and delivery were analyzed in 23 women one to ten years after undergoing prosthetic heart valve replacement. The main points of management during pregnancy and delivery were cardiac management and management against thromboembolism. The functional status of the pregnant patients was grade I of the New York Heart Association criteria in eight, grade II in 13 and grade III and higher in...

The surgical replacement of diseased heart valves is based on the premise that the prosthesis chosen to replace a stenotic or insufficient valve will have a beneficial impact on the patient’s heart function, taking into account the risks of surgery and the recognized complications of prosthetic heart valves. It is well established that mitral valve replacement (MVR) is associated with higher sh...

OBJECTIVES Infective endocarditis (IE) is a severe complication in Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia (SAB) and recent guidelines from the BSAC recommend all patients undergo echocardiography. We assessed the use of echocardiography at a major tertiary referral centre and sought to identify those patients most likely to have positive findings. METHODS We retrospectively evaluated all cases of ...

Prosthetic heart valve (PHV) replacement replaces a heart disease with another one. There is no ideal prosthetic heart valve. All of the prosthetic heart valves need to be followed by caution. PHV diseases (PHVD) includes a group of pathologic processes like prosthetic valve obstruction, thromboembolism and regurgitation. Correct diagnosis and treatment of these pathologic situations will decre...