Left Ventricular Unloading With Surgically Implanted Microaxial Flow Pump in Patients on Venoarterial Membrane Oxygenation.

Venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) is applied for the treatment of cardiogenic shock. Concomitant left ventricular unloading (LVU) with a microaxial flow pump (mAFP) enables myocardial and pulmonary recovery and may overcome some of the limitations of VA-ECMO. The study included 145 cardiogenic shock patients, 89 (61.

Surgery for blood culture-negative infective endocarditis: outcomes and the role of molecular biological imaging as diagnostic approach.

Objectives: The study aimed to analyze outcomes of surgery for blood culture-negative infective endocarditis (BCNIE) and to evaluate the role of molecular biological imaging.

Methods: Patients undergoing surgery for native or prosthetic valve endocarditis from 2013 to 2022 were analyzed regarding blood culture-positive infective endocarditis (BCPIE) and BCNIE. For laboratory diagnostics in BCNIE, excised valves or prostheses underwent conventional microbiological culture and fluorescence in situ hybridization combined with 16S rRNA-gene polymerase chain reaction and sequencing (FISHseq).

Enhanced recovery after minimally invasive cardiac surgery following a zero ICU concept-a propensity score-matched analysis.

Objectives: This study investigates our enhanced recovery after minimally invasive cardiac surgery program "enhanced recovery after minimally invasive cardiac surgery" (ERMICS) following a 'Zero ICU' concept compared to standard-of-care treatment in terms of safety and clinical efficacy.

Methods: All patients who underwent minimally invasive mitral valve surgery for primary severe mitral valve regurgitation between 2021 and 2023 were included. Propensity score matching (2:1) was performed between patients who received standard-of-care treatment and those who underwent ERMICS.

Impact of concomitant aortic valve replacement in patients with mild-to-moderate aortic valve regurgitation undergoing left ventricular assist device implantation: EUROMACS analysis.

Introduction: Left ventricular assist device (LVAD) therapy may lead to an aortic regurgitation, limiting left ventricular unloading and causing adverse events. Whether concomitant aortic valve replacement may improve outcomes in patients with preoperative mild-to-moderate aortic regurgitation remains unclear.

Methods: A retrospective propensity score-matched analysis of adult patients with preoperative mild-to-moderate aortic regurgitation undergoing durable LVAD implantation between 01/01/2011 and 30/11/2021 was performed.

Endocarditis associated with contamination of cardiovascular bioprostheses with Mycobacterium chelonae: a collaborative microbiological study.

Background: Mycobacterium chelonae is a rare cause of infective endocarditis that is difficult to diagnose and treat. After we found M chelonae in a series of patients, we aimed to investigate its role in cardiovascular prosthesis dysfunction and contamination of bioprostheses as a possible cause of infection.

Methods: In this collaborative microbiological study, we report on nine patients treated in three cardiovascular surgical departments in Germany, who were found to have M chelonae infection after receiving BioIntegral bioprostheses.

Diagnostic Benefit of Molecular Imaging in Patients Undergoing Heart Valve Surgery for Infective Endocarditis.

(1) Background: The successful treatment of infective endocarditis (IE) relies on detecting causative pathogens to administer targeted antibiotic therapy. In addition to standard microbiological cultivation of pathogens from tissue obtained during heart valve surgery, the potential of molecular biological methods was evaluated. (2) Methods: A retrospective study was performed on heart valve tissue from 207 patients who underwent heart valve surgery for IE.

MV-GNN: Generation of continuous geometric representations of mitral valve motion from 3D+t echocardiography.

We present a geometric deep-learning method for reconstructing a temporally continuous mitral valve surface mesh from 3D transesophageal echocardiography sequences. Our approach features a supervised end-to-end deep learning architecture that combines a convolutional neural network-based voxel encoder and decoder with a graph neural network-based multi-resolution mesh decoder, all trained on sparse landmark annotations. Key elements of our methodology include a tube-shaped prototype mesh with labeled vertices, a specialized loss function to preserve the known inlet and outlet, and a rigid alignment system for anatomical landmarks.

Short-term vital parameter forecasting in the intensive care unit: A benchmark study leveraging data from patients after cardiothoracic surgery.

Patients in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are closely and continuously monitored, and many machine learning (ML) solutions have been proposed to predict specific outcomes like death, bleeding, or organ failure. Forecasting of vital parameters is a more general approach to ML-based patient monitoring, but the literature on its feasibility and robust benchmarks of achievable accuracy are scarce. We implemented five univariate statistical models (the naïve model, the Theta method, exponential smoothing, the autoregressive integrated moving average model, and an autoregressive single-layer neural network), two univariate neural networks (N-BEATS and N-HiTS), and two multivariate neural networks designed for sequential data (a recurrent neural network with gated recurrent unit, GRU, and a Transformer network) to produce forecasts for six vital parameters recorded at five-minute intervals during intensive care monitoring.

Combined Surgical and Percutaneous Management of Circumflex Artery Occlusion After Minimally Invasive Mitral Valve Repair.

This report describes a hybrid intervention addressing left circumflex artery occlusion during minimally invasive mitral valve repair. By using a radiopaque Cor-Knot device (LSI Solutions), targeted removal of occluding sutures was achieved, circumventing sternotomy and coronary artery bypass. Real-time coronary angiography provided assessment of procedural success during surgical revision in a hybrid operating room.

Hydrostatic pressure drives sprouting angiogenesis via adherens junction remodelling and YAP signalling.

Endothelial cell physiology is governed by its unique microenvironment at the interface between blood and tissue. A major contributor to the endothelial biophysical environment is blood hydrostatic pressure, which in mechanical terms applies isotropic compressive stress on the cells. While other mechanical factors, such as shear stress and circumferential stretch, have been extensively studied, little is known about the role of hydrostatic pressure in the regulation of endothelial cell behavior.

German Heart Surgery Report 2023: The Annual Updated Registry of the German Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.

Based on a voluntary registry, founded by the German Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (DGTHG) in 1980, a well-defined but limited dataset of all cardiac and vascular surgery procedures performed in 77 German heart surgery departments is reported annually. For the year 2023, a total of 168,841 procedures were submitted to the registry. Of these operations, 100,606 are defined as heart surgery procedures in a classical sense.

Early clinical outcomes of Portico and Edwards Sapien 3 valve prosthesis in transcatheter aortic valve replacement: propensity-matched analysis.

Introduction: There is a lack of real-world data directly comparing different valve prostheses for transaortic valve replacement (TAVR). We aimed to compare early clinical outcomes at 30-days between the self-expandable Portico valve (Abbott) with the balloon-expandable Edwards Sapien 3 valve (Edwards Lifesciences) (ES3).

Methods: Out of 1,901 patients undergoing TAVR between January 2018 and December 2021, all patients who received either Portico valve or ES3 valve via transfemoral TAVR were matched using nearest-neighbor (1:1) propensity scoring.

LVAD as a Bridge to Transplantation-Current Status and Future Perspectives.

Heart failure (HF) is a common disease associated with high morbidity and mortality rates despite advanced pharmacological therapies. Heart transplantation remains the gold standard therapy for end-stage heart failure; however, its application is curtailed by the persistent shortage of donor organs. Over the past two decades, mechanical circulatory support, notably Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs), have been established as an option for patients waiting for a donor organ.

Left ventricular diastolic function assessed by speckle tracking echocardiography in patients with left ventricular aneurysm.

Speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) parameters are an integral part of the assessment of left ventricular (LV) function. We aimed to evaluate established and novel STE parameters of LV diastolic function and their prognostic role in patients with LV anteroapical aneurysm undergoing surgical ventricular repair (SVR). We retrospectively examined the data of 137 patients with anteroapical LV aneurysm who underwent SVR.