Aortic valve replacement using continuous suture technique in patients with aortic valve disease.

Background: The continuous suture (CS) technique has several advantages as a method for simple, fast, and secure aortic valve replacement (AVR). We used a simple CS technique without the use of a pledget for AVR and evaluated the surgical outcomes.

Materials And Methods: Between October 2007 and 2012, 123 patients with aortic valve disease underwent AVR alone (n=28) or with other concomitant cardiac procedures (n=95), such as mitral, tricuspid, or aortic surgery.

Postintubation Tracheal Ruptures - A case report -.

Tracheobronchial ruptures (TBR) rarely complicate surgical procedures under general anesthesia. Seemingly uneventful intubations can result in injury to the trachea, which often manifests as hemoptysis and subcutaneous emphysema. We present 2 patients with postintubation TBR who were treated surgically and discuss considerations in the management of this potentially lethal injury.

Tricuspid leaflet augmentation to eliminate residual regurgitation in severe functional tricuspid regurgitation.

We describe a technique for treating severe functional tricuspid regurgitation (TR) when residual regurgitation cannot be eliminated with ring annuloplasty alone. The anterior leaflet and the anterior half of the posterior leaflet are augmented with an elliptic pericardial patch before implantation of a rigid annuloplasty ring. We successfully performed this procedure in 9 patients with severe TR due to severe leaflet tethering or short coaptation length and achieved complete elimination of TR with sufficient coaptation length in tricuspid valve leaflets for all patients.