Transvenous lead extraction after heart transplantation: How to avoid abandoned lead fragments.

Background: Many patients awaiting heart transplantation (HTX) have a cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED). Lead removal is often still a part of the HTX procedure. Abandoned lead fragments carry a risk for infections and prohibit magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) imaging.

Distinction of non-ischemia inducing versus ischemia inducing coronary stenosis by fluorescent cardiac imaging.

Intraoperative fluorescent cardiac imaging (FCI) can quantitatively assess myocardial perfusion abnormalities produced by graded flow-limiting coronary stenosis (FLS), but there are no data to distinguish FLS from non flow-limiting stenosis (NFLS) to determine their functional significance. The aim of the study was to evaluate whether non-ischemia inducing NFLS can be quantified and differentiated from FLS by FCI technology. Data are compared to gold standard fluorescent microspheres (FM).

Implantation of a right ventricular implantable cardioverter-defibrillator lead in the right ventricular outflow tract in a patient with Ebstein anomaly and right ventricular lead dislocation.

An 80-year-old patient with Ebstein anomaly and prior implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantation was sent to our heart center because of right ventricular (RV)-ICD lead dislocation. Positioning of the new RV lead was difficult, no stable position could be found, and sensing and threshold measurements showed weak results in the RV basis, apex, and septum. So, we conducted positioning of the lead in the RV outflow tract where a stable position with good sensing and threshold parameters was found.