BackgroundThe aim of this study is to see how the sutureless, stentless, Perceval S aortic valves behave when implanted in elderly patients with small aortic root and the comparison with a second group of patients with similar characteristics where a conventional stented bioprosthesis was implanted. This is a prospective randomized institutional study.MethodsOur material is composed from 25 patients who underwent aortic valve replacement with sutureless self-anchoring Perceval S valve implantation (LivaNova), compared with 25 patients with conventional stented biological prosthesis implanted (soprano LivaNova group). The two groups of patients have similar demographic and medical characteristics with severe aortic stenosis. The study was conducted from January 2012 to June 2014. Preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative parameters were studied in order to investigate the utility of the Perceval S valves in this group of patients.ResultsThe Perceval S valve implantation seems to be an interesting biological valve with good hemodynamic characteristics as compared with the typical biological prosthesis providing shorter ischemia time (40 ± 5.50 min vs 86 ± 15.86 min; p < 0.001), shorter extracorporeal circulation time (73.75 ± 8.12 min vs 120.36 ± 28.31 min p < 0.001), less operation time (149.38 ± 15.22 min vs 206.64 ± 42.85 min; p < 0.001) and better postoperative recovery. The postoperative gradients were 23.5 ± 19.20 mmHg vs 24.5 ± 19.90 mmHg respectively. The postoperative effective orifice area in these two groups were respectively 1.5 =/-0.19 cm2 vs 1.1=/-0.5 cm2 (p 0.002). Among the 25 patients of the Soprano stented valve, 3 (12 %) came back in 6 months with New York Heart Association (NYHA) 3. The PPM of these patients was the cause of readmission in the Hospital required diuresis and supplementary treatment.ConclusionsAortic valve replacement with Perceval aortic valves in geriatric patients with comorbidities and small aortic annulus seems to be an alternative, safe and “fast” intervention with excellent short and mid-term results which provides a better effective orifice area.

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Detection of epsilon waves on 12-lead ECG reflects significant RVOT involvement, which was associated with episodes of sustained ventricular tachycardia but not sudden cardiac death.

Introduction: Microstructural abnormalities at the epicardium of the right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT) may provide the arrhythmia substrate in Brugada syndrome (BrS). Endocardial unipolar electroanatomical mapping allows the identification of epicardial abnormalities. We evaluated the clinical implications of an abnormal endocardial substrate as perceived by high-density electroanatomical mapping (HDEAM) in patients with BrS. Methods: Fourteen high-risk BrS patients with aborted sudden cardiac death (SCD) (12 males, mean age: 41.9 ± 11.8 years) underwent combined endocardial-epicardial HDEAM of the right ventricle/RVOT, while 40 asymptomatic patients (33 males, mean age: 42 ± 10.7 years) underwent endocardial HDEAM. Based on combined endocardial-epicardial procedures, endocardial HDEAM was considered abnormal in the presence of low voltage areas (LVAs) more than 1 cm 2 with bipolar signals less than 1 mV and unipolar signals less than 5.3 mV. Programmed ventricular stimulation (PVS) was performed in all patients.Results: The endocardial unipolar LVAs were colocalized with epicardial bipolar LVAs (p = .0027). Patients with aborted SCD exhibited significantly wider endocardial unipolar (p < .01) and bipolar LVAs (p < .01) compared with asymptomatic individuals. A substrate size of unipolar LVAs more than 14.5 cm 2 (area under the curve [AUC]: 0.92, p < .001] and bipolar LVAs more than 3.68 cm 2 (AUC: 0.82,

A more specific delineation of LA fibrosis may be produced using the TPI feature of the ConfiDense mapping module, through elimination of false-positive annotated mapping points due to low contact.