Prediction of survival in patients with cardiogenic shock and multiorgan failure treated with biventricular assist device.

Mechanical circulatory support (MCS) is valuable in saving the lives of patients with severe cardiogenic shock. However, their survival is limited if multiorgan failure (MOF) proves to be irreversible. Although ventricular assist devices (VADs) have been shown to reverse end-organ failure in some patients, the pathophysiological mechanisms of end-organ failure and its regression are not fully understood, and clinical markers and thresholds for the "point of no return" are lacking.

Predictors of early mortality in patients with active infective native or prosthetic aortic root endocarditis undergoing homograft aortic root replacement.

Purpose: We compared early results of homograft aortic root replacement (ARR) in native (NVE) and prosthetic (PVE) aortic valve endocarditis in order to identify predictors for early mortality (<30 days).

Methods: Between 05/1986 and 12/2007, 1,163 endocarditis patients were operated upon. Of these, 221 patients (n = 185 men, median age 55 years) underwent homograft ARR due to 99 cases of NVE (45%) and 122 of PVE (55%) aortic root endocarditis.

Aorticopulmonary paraganglioma with severe obstruction of the pulmonary artery: successful combined treatment by stenting and surgery.

Aorticopulmonary paraganglioma is a rare tumor of the middle mediastinum. Complete surgical resection is the only effective treatment, even when it may pose a surgical challenge due to the proximity of the tumor to the heart and great vessels, often rendering complete resection difficult to achieve. We report the case of a 30-year-old woman with an aorticopulmonary paraganglioma who presented with severe pulmonary hypertension due to obstruction of the pulmonary artery.