Coronary angiography (CA) to screen for the presence of coronary artery disease (CAD) is routinely performed before elective heart valve surgery. Its use is liberally advocated across a wide spectrum of patients by the writing committees for the treatment of patients with valvular heart disease (VHD) of the American College of Cardiology/ American Heart Association and the European Society of C...

endocarditis due to aspergillus infection is a rare complication in patients with hematological malignancies. here, we present a case of aspergillus endocarditis in a patient with acute myeloid leukemia (aml) successfully treated with antifungal therapy and surgical treatment. the patient was a 51 years old male, a known case of aml who was admitted to our medical center for evacuating his valv...

Aim. To evaluate the contribution of SOD1, CAT, PXDN1, NOS3, EDN1, VCAM, ICAM, PECAM, SELE and SELP genes to pathogenesis infective endocarditis in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Material Methods. We studied 25 native heart valves obtained from with 13 other valvular pathology. The expression was determined by qPCR. Immunofluorescent staining performed using specific primary antibodies ni...

Unlike the steady decline observed in coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery rates over the last couple of decades [1], there has been a rise in non-congenital [2] and congenital heart valve operations through the last 10–15 years [3]. This upsurge can firstly attributed to the increasing prevalence of degenerative valvular heart disease due to the rising age of the population worldwide. S...

There is a lack of data regarding heart surgery on patients who have been previously pneumectomized. These patients pose unique challenges and surgical management may necessitate deviations from standard methods in the perioperative course. To summarize the available knowledge and to assess the optimal methods, we reviewed all reported patients with prior pneumonectomy who were subjected to cor...

BACKGROUND The authors investigated the effect of a single preoperative bolus of erythropoietin on perioperative transfusion requirement and erythropoiesis in patients with preoperative anemia undergoing valvular heart surgery. METHODS In this prospective, single-site, single-blinded, randomized, and parallel-arm controlled trial, 74 patients with preoperative anemia were randomly allocated t...

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,...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common complication after cardiac surgery, its frequency ranges between 25– 40% reaching upto 50% following bypass surgeries as reported in previous studies. Several reports have indicated that postoperative AF is associated with significantly increased morbidity and mortality. 2 Our primary aim in this study was to investigate the effectiveness of prophylactic mag...

ObjectivesAtrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia. Drug treatment of AF usually leads to an unsatisfactory rate of recurrence. The Cox-maze III procedure for atrial fibrillation has been effective in restoring sinus rhythm in patients with mitral valve disease. MethodsFrom September 2000 to September 2002, 10 consecutive patients with rheumatic mitral valve dise...