Background: Cardiac myxomas are the most frequently encountered benign cardiac tumors that if left untreated are inexorably progressive and potentially fatal. Surgery is the only way of treatment, and if not treated with the right surgical technique recurrence occurs. Objectives: In this single center study we documented the patterns of presentation, localization, surgical approaches and outcome of cardiac myxomas. Methods: This is a retrospective study of 20 patients who underwent surgical removal of atrial myxoma from January 2010 to December 2015. All patients underwent general investigations, and echocardiography was performed on all patients and surgery was done using extracorporeal circulation and mild hypothermia. Results: The ages of the patients ranged from 14 years to 71 years, with a mean of 51.45 years. Most myxomas (75%) originated from left atrium, 20% from right atrium and biatrial in 5% of cases. The male-to-female ratio was 1:2.3 (14 females and 6 males). Myxomas were more common in blood group A+ and B+. Chief complaints were dyspnea (70%) and palpitation (50%). The majority of masses were attached to the interatrial septum (65%) and four of cases (20%) arose from the lateral wall. Right atrial trans-septal incision was used in 55% of cases. No recurrence was recorded in our study. Six patients had postoperative complications, mainly in the form of arrhythmia (3 cases), bleeding (0ne case) and renal failure (one case) which resulted in the death of the patient.

Background: Deep sternal wound infection (DSWI), or mediastinitis, is a devastating complication of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). This prospective study aimed to assess our management of DSWI in view of the published literature. Methods: Over 2-years (ending in January 2016), 29 patients (20 males) developed DSWI amongst 520 patients who underwent standard CABG surgeries (5.6%). Pre-, intra-and postoperative variables were documented. Whenever possible, the infections were culture-verified. Besides antibiotics, patients received one or more of the following therapies: drainage, debridement, closed irrigation, sternal re-wiring, vacuum-assisted closure (VAC), and bone resection. Results: the male to female ratio was 2.2:1. Mean age was 58.1 ± 7.3 years. The mean body mass index (BMI) was 27.9 ± 3.4 kg/m 2 . There were 18, 16 and 11 patients with diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) respectively. Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) was utilized in 26 (89.7%) patients with a mean time of 117.5 ± 23.3 minutes. Most surgeries (n = 21, 72.4%) lasted 5 -6 hrs. According to Pairolero classification, there were 3 (10.3%) Type I, 22 (75.9%) Type II and 4 (13.8%) Type III infections. Four (13.8%) cases were culture-verified. Twenty-three (79.3%) DSWIs were surgically managed. Sternal re-wiring was performed in 14 (48.3%) cases while VAC was added to other therapies in 2 (6.9%) patients. DSWIs completely resolved in 18 (62.0%) patients within 3 -24 weeks while two (6.9%) patients died within 30 days. Conclusion: We have identified six independent risk factors for DSWI (male gender, obesity, DM, hypertension, COPD and CPB), five of them are modifiable.