Treatment of damaged cardiac tissue in patients with high bleeding tendency can be very challenging, damaged myocardial tissue has a high rupture risk when being sutured subsequently on-going bleeding is a major risk factor for poor clinical outcome. We present a case demonstrating the feasibility in using a novel haemostatic collagen sponge for the management of a myocardial wound. This report is the first description in cardiac surgery where Hemopatch® sponges are used to successfully seal a left ventricle wound. Our patient was diagnosed with endocarditis, had a low pre-operative haemoglobin count and underwent cardiac surgery for multiple valve repairs. The procedure was performed on cardiopulmonary bypass, which meant our patient had to be heparinized. Despite these major risk factors for bleeding Hemopatch® managed to contain bleeding and seal the wound, no sutures were needed.

No abstract

Treatment of left ventricle wall rupture is very challenging, ruptured myocardial tissue is usually of poor quality and has a high risk of total rupture when being sutured. Furthermore, rapid decision-making is needed under stressful conditions. We present a series of three cases demonstrating the feasibility of using only hemostatic collagen sponges for the management of left ventricle wall rupture. All patients we Caucasian males, two patients were 65 years and one patient was 67 years old at the time of surgery. This report contains the first video images of solely use of hemostatic collagen sponges to seal a left ventricle wall rupture. Implication of our case series could be that the indication to use hemostatic collagen sponges, could be broadened towards other surgical specialties where suturing ruptured tissue can be difficult.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13019-014-0136-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.