A better approach for left ventricular training in transposition of the great arteries and intact interventricular septum: Bidirectional cavopulmonary anastomosis and pulmonary artery banding.

Objective: Management of the patients with transposition of the great arteries and intact ventricular septum may be challenging beyond the newborn period. Herein, we would like to present our alternative strategy for training the left ventricle in these patients.

Methods: Six patients with transposition of the great arteries and intact ventricular septum were evaluated in our clinic.

Investigating the Impacts of Preoperative Steroid Treatment on Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha and Duration of Extubation Time underwent Ventricular Septal Defect Surgery.

Background: Cardiopulmonary bypass is known to cause inflammatory events. Inflammation occurs due to many known important biological processes. Numerous mechanisms are known to be responsible for the development of inflammatory processes.

Unusual manifestations of brucellosis.

Brucellosis is an important public health problem in the Mediterranean countries, including our country. Furthermore, because of different symptoms and clinical findings, the disease could be confused with several other diseases. In this article, three unusual findings of brucellosis are presented: pancytopenia, endocarditis and meningitis.

Hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus seroprevalence in rural areas of the southwestern region of Turkey.

Objectives: Most previous studies on the frequency of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) have analyzed data obtained from blood donors and risk groups. Few studies have been conducted in the field in rural and urban areas of Turkey. The aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of HBV and HCV and to investigate the association with risk factors.

Endobronchial hamartoma in a case with neurofibromatosis.

A 60-year-old male patient with neurofibromatosis type 1 presented with a right pulmonary mass. Bronchoscopic evaluation revealed an endobronchial mass on the right upper lobe.He was operated on after a bronchial biopsy and a fine-needle aspiration biopsy revealed non-specific findings.

Systemic pulmonary shunt performed with Shelhigh internal mammary artery: early results.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate early findings for aortopulmonary shunts using bovine internal mammary artery grafting.

Methods: Bovine internal mammary artery grafts biomodified with glutaraldehyde and the Shelhigh No-React process were used between May 2005 and April 2006 in our clinic for 20 cases of aorta-pulmonary artery shunts. We implanted 2 sizes of grafts, either a graft with 4-mm proximal and 5-mm distal diameters or a graft with 5-mm proximal and 6-mm distal diameters.

A novel approach for off-pump atrial septostomy applications.

Atrial septostomy or septectomy are required to enable atrial mixture in various congenital cardiac lesions. The aim of this article was to introduce a technique where atrial septostomy application could be employed off pump with the aid of a new device. To our knowledge this is the first report for this technique in the literature.