[Percutaneous transluminal valvuloplasty in pulmonary stenosis. Apropos of 24 cases].

Twenty-four patients with moderate or severe valvular pulmonary stenosis were treated by percutaneous transluminal valvuloplasty (PTV). The age of the patients ranged from 24 hours to 27 years. Eighteen patients (group I) had a right ventricle-pulmonary artery (RV-PA) pressure gradient greater than 50 mmHg (measured simultaneously or during catheter withdrawal).

[Ventricular arrhythmia following repair of Fallot's tetralogy. Apropos of 59 cases].

Fifty-nine patients operated for Fallot's tetralogy were reviewed over 3 years after surgery. The average age at surgery was 7.4 years (range 6 months to 37 years).

[Exercise test in isolated anomalies of auriculo-ventricular conduction in children and adolescents. Value in idiopathic auriculo-ventricular blocks and ventricular pre-excitation syndromes].

Abnormal atrioventricular conduction in children and adolescents without obvious underlying cardiac disease poses the problem of long term prognosis. This study of 45 patients aged 8 to 18 years with congenital atrioventricular block (30 cases) or ventricular pre-excitation (15 cases), was undertaken to determine the value of exercise testing, a physiological adrenergic stress test, in the assessment of these patients. Our results show that exercise testing was valuable in determining the site of atrioventricular block: during exercise the degree of block increased in two patients, justifying electrophysiological investigations which showed infrahisian block in one case; when the block was stable or improved on exercise, the atropine test, performed in 21 cases, gave concordant results in 18 cases (the same change with atropine and exercise): the block was nodal in all these patients.

Echocardiographic assessment of cardiac function in children with chronic renal failure.

Echocardiographic assessment of cardiac function was made on 24 children with chronic renal failure of varying etiology and severity. In 20 patients without evidence of cardiac failure, parameters of left ventricular performance as represented by PEP/LVET and mean velocity of circumferential fiber shortening were within normal limits in the majority of patients. In addition, ejection fraction and shortening fraction were, in most children, within the 95% confidence limits for their age.

[Long-term follow up of surgically-treated congenital heart disease: interauricular communication, aortic coarctation, tetralogy of Fallot].

Based on data from the literature and their own experience, the authors study the long-term clinical course of patients with interatrial communications (IAC), coarctation of the aorta (CAo) and tetralogy of Fallot (TF) who have been operated. According to data from the literature and 50 cases which were reviewed an average of 11 years after the operation, operated cases of IAC are at risk of developing arrhythmias or conduction disturbances, especially if the operation was performed after the age of 20, in cases with cardiomegaly, with a mean pulmonary artery pressure of more than 20 mmHg and a pulmonary flow/systemic flow ratio due to the shunt greater than 1.5.

Subxiphoid two-dimensional echocardiographic diagnosis of double-chambered right ventricle.

The echocardiographic features of 14 patients with double-chambered right ventricle are presented. Diagnosis was confirmed in 13 patients at cardiac catheterization and in one at necropsy. The ultrasonic diagnosis was based on the visualization in subxiphoid short-axis view of an anomalous muscle bundle at the lower margin of the right ventricular infundibulum; this structure was present in diastole and systole and the distal portion of infundibulum was wide and free of obstruction.