Survival, clinical status and quality of life five years after coronary surgery. The ARCA study.

Introduction And Objectives: Little is known about the long-term outcomes of coronary surgery and their determinants in Spain. The objectives of this study were to evaluate clinical outcomes, quality of life and survival in a cohort of patients 5 years after undergoing a first aortocoronary bypass operation without any other associated procedure.

Methods: Patients who survived the operation and whose pre- and postoperative data had been collected prospectively were followed up by telephone interview after 5 years.

[The unequal clinical profile, quality of life and hospital mortality in patients undergoing aortocoronary bypass in the public and private centers of Catalonia. The CIRCORCA Study].

Introduction And Aims: The influence of the type of health care funding and management of hospital centres on hospital mortality in coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) has not been analyzed in detail. We therefore assessed clinical and quality of life preoperative profiles and in-hospital mortality in public and private patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery in Catalonia.

Methods: Clinical questionnaires, Duke Activity Status Index (DASI) and SF-36 were preoperatively administered to all patients undergoing first coronary bypass surgery without associated procedures in Catalonia between November 1996-June 1997.

Acute myocardial ischemia resulting in dynamic obstruction to the left ventricular outflow relieved by successful angioplasty.

A patient was admitted because of an acute myocardial infarction which evolved with heart failure and postinfarction angina. A pattern consistent with dynamic left ventricular outflow obstruction was found. It disappeared after coronary angioplasty was performed on the vessel responsible for the ischemia.

[Traumatic rupture of the tricuspid valve. Its conservative surgical treatment].

Tricuspid insufficiency caused by blunt chest trauma is rare and usually unsuspected clinically, early after trauma. Cross-sectional Echocardiography and Cardiac Catheterization are essential to establish the diagnosis. Therapy applied varies from repair to valvular replacement.

Ventricular arrhythmias in aortic valve disease: a further marker of impaired left ventricular function.

One hundred and twenty stable patients with pure and severe aortic valve disease and without coronary lesions (aortic stenosis, 43 patients; aortic regurgitation, 45 patients; combined aortic stenosis and regurgitation, 32 patients) who had been submitted to haemodynamic studies were prospectively studied with standard electrocardiograms, M-mode echocardiograms, and 24-hour ambulatory electrocardiography (Holter recording). The frequency and complexity of ventricular arrhythmias were related to clinical parameters such as functional class, type of lesion and presence of syncope, and to parameters of left ventricular hypertrophy and function. Ventricular arrhythmias were present in 92% of patients.