The first description of pulmonary arteriovenous malformations (PAVM) was made already in 1897 by Churton [1]. PAVM are abnormal vascular structures that connect the pulmonary arterial bed directly to the pulmonary venous bed, thereby bypassing the pulmonary capillaries and resulting in an intrapulmonary shunt which, depending on number and size of the PAVM, may result in arterial desaturation ...

Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) always results in death if not surgically treated. Approximately half of the children diagnosed with HLHS are not referred for surgery and die within days or weeks (1-3). The surgical treatment of HLHS includes three highly complex, costly surgeries that have a high mortality rate (4). The mortality rate during the first stage of the surgery ranges from 25...

OBJECTIVE Despite that surgical outcomes of patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome have improved, one of the problems remaining is the high interstage mortality after a stage I Norwood procedure. The purpose of this study was to determine the hemodynamic characteristics of hypoplastic left heart syndrome after a Norwood procedure. We examined the perioperative hemodynamic differences of ...

Case 1 A 27-year-old woman was referred to our hospital for further evaluation of an abnormal shadow in the right lower lung field on chest x-ray (Figure 1). She was asymptomatic. The 3D CT clearly demonstrated an abnormal pulmonary vein that drained into the suprahepatic inferior vena cava (Figure 2). Cardiac catheterization showed a mean pulmonary artery pressure of 15 mm Hg, a pulmonary/syst...

the right lung becomes functionally impaired as a result of lung disease or surgery. For instance, a right pneumonectomy could have fatal consequences in a patient with partial anomalous pulmonary venous drainage of the left upper lobe. In such a situation, shunt volume would dramatically increase to 50% of total pulmonary blood flow, and only the left lower lobe would be contributing to the sy...

BACKGROUND Staged palliative surgery markedly shifts the balance of volume load on a single ventricle and pulmonary vascular bed. Blalock-Taussig shunt necessitates a single ventricle eject blood to both the systemic and pulmonary circulation. On the contrary, bidirectional cavopulmonary shunt release the single ventricle from pulmonary circulation. CASE PRESENTATION We report a case of tricu...

A 69-year-old woman was evaluated for progressive dyspnea and pulmonary hypertension. She had World Health Organization class III symptoms, was obese (41 kg/m body mass index), and had chronic atrial fibrillation, obstructive sleep apnea, and mild chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Positive findings on physical examination included an elevated jugular venous pressure (14 cm), irregular rhyt...

Introduction Shunt-induced hypoxemia is considered the primary pathophysiological abnormality and main diagnostic criteria of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). However, increases in dead-space ventilation (VD/VT) can also contribute to gas exchange alterations in ARDS. Systemic microcirculatory alterations described during inflammatory conditions are characterized by perfusion heterog...