Clinical results of the Pop De Popa xenobioprosthesis in patients with advanced heart failure: long-term follow-up of 562 patients.

From January of 1984 through December of 1990, we implanted 739 Pop De Popa wild boar aortic valves in 626 patients, in all cardiac valvular positions. Of these patients, 562 received only the Pop De Popa xenobioprostheses, which numbered 620 valves. Only patients with contraindications for bioprosthetic valves (such as children under the age of 15) were excluded.

[The reperfusion syndrome].

The syndrome of reperfusion is a succession of pathologic phenomena, developing at the level of a tissue that had suffered from an episode of acute ischemia and is then reperfused normally. The clinical phenomena present, characterized mainly by the appearance of an important local edema and of clear signs of tissular suffering, with sensory and motor nervous disturbances, lack of muscular contracture and, finally, phenomena of necrosis, are due to development at cellular level of some processes leading, during reperfusion and resuming of the oxygen contribution towards cells, to some chemical processes which generate an important activation of several systems with major tissular aggressiveness. The phenomena initiated locally produce here a secondary lesion that impairs the recovery of the ischemized territory, on the one hand, and the products generated in this territory activate similar phenomena in the distance, on the other hand.

[Fatal postoperative pulmonary embolism].

A total of 76 cases were investigated in which fatal postoperative pulmonary embolisms were identified at the necroptic study. The following aspects are considered: the high incidence of fatal postoperative pulmonary embolisms in patients without favouring factors in antecedents (38%), and of patients operated for benign affections (50.6%); the rare occurrence of clinical signs of venous thrombosis in patients with fatal postoperative pulmonary embolisms (11.

[Use of naloxone (Narcar) in anesthesiological practice].

The antagonising effect induced on respiratory depression by fentanyl and morphine was studied in two lots of patients. Recovery from respiratory depression was general and evident. A correlation was found between the amount of naloxone and the amount of the major analgesic used.