Heart Transplantation and Thromboembolic Risk In Patients With Percutaneous Aortic Valve Prosthesis and Left Ventricular Assist Device: A Case Report.

Transcatheter aortic valve replacements have become a good option for patients with aortic valve disease and high surgical risk. Thromboembolism is reported as a relatively common complication of Transcatheter aortic valve replacement. This risk may be increased in patients who have left ventricular assist devices, as valve motion is drastically reduced.

Heart Transplantation in a Patient With a Heterotopic Percutaneous Tricuspid Valve Prosthesis: A Case Report.

The bicaval transcatheter prosthesis (TricValve) allows the treatment of cava reflux in patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation and high surgical risk. It consists of the implantation of 2 self-expanding valves in both vena cava without directly approaching the native tricuspid valve. Heart transplantation in this setting may require some modifications compared with the conventional bicaval technique.

Development of a Novel Prediction Model for Red Blood Cell Transfusion Risk in Cardiac Surgery.

Background: Cardiac surgery is a complex and invasive procedure that often requires blood transfusions to replace the blood lost during surgery. Blood products are a scarce and expensive resource. Therefore, it is essential to develop a standardized approach to determine the need for blood transfusions in cardiac surgery.

Donor-specific circulating cell free DNA as a noninvasive biomarker of graft injury in heart transplantation.

Background: Considerable effort has been exerted to develop noninvasive diagnostic biomarkers that might replace or reduce the need to perform endomyocardial biopsies. In this context, graft DNA circulating on transplant recipients has been proposed as a potential biomarker of organ rejection or cellular graft injury.

Methods: We propose a digital PCR (dPCR) method based on the amplification of ten specific InDels sufficiently sensitive to detect small amounts of specific donor circulating DNA diluted on the host cell free DNA (cfDNA).

The morphologically right and left ventricles cannot be distinguished by their coronary arterial pattern.

Objectives: The morphologically right and left ventricles are distinguished from each other based on their internal anatomical features, because their external (epicardial) surfaces do not appear to have any distinguishing mark for such ventricular identification. Nevertheless, ventricular identification based on epicardial characteristics, if these were possible, would be interesting to surgeons, because this would enable them to identify each ventricle rapidly upon opening the chest. This made us curious as to whether or not the two ventricles may be distinguished based on their epicardial coronary arterial patterns, because this is the most obvious epicardial ventricular feature.

A simple surgical technique to prevent atrial reentrant tachycardia in surgery for congenital heart disease†.

Objectives: To present and test a simple surgical technique that may prevent atrial reentrant tachycardia following surgery for congenital heart disease. This arrhythmia is one of the commonest long-term complications of such a surgery. It may occur many years (even decades) after the operation.

Surgical technique for heart transplantation: a strategy for congenital heart disease.

The standard techniques for orthotopic heart transplantation often require certain adjustments when the procedure is carried out for complex congenital heart disease. This is because of both the unusual anatomy and possible distortions caused by previous surgery. Such technical adjustments have been described in various published reports over the years.