A Rare Case of Infective Mediastinitis after Melody Valve Implantation

Abstract

Pulmonary valve implant is frequently necessary in children and adults with congenital heart disease. Infective endocarditis represents a rare but life-threatening complication after transcatheter pulmonary valve implantation. There are various treatments for native or prosthetic valve endocarditis. Surgical intervention, combined with intravenous antibiotic treatment, is of paramount importance, in case of concomitant mediastinal infection, in order to ensure the radical debridement of all infected tissue, avoiding any recurrent endocarditis. In this report, we describe a rare case of mediastinitis, associated with an infected endocarditis, occurring 8 months after Melody (Medtronic Ò , Minneapolis, USA) valve implant, successfully treated with the implantation of a homograft to reconstruct the right ventricular outflow tract.

Efficiency of an algorithm for the prevention of sternal infection after cardiac surgery in children under 1 year of age: A single-center retrospective study

“…It is advisable to divide the risk factors for the development of complications in accordance with the stages of patients’ treatment: preoperative, intraoperative, postoperative. The main risk factors for the pediatric category according to various studies [ [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , 7 , 8 , 15 , [22] , [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] ] are. preoperative: age under 1 year old, cyanotic CHD, a genetic syndrome, hospitalization exceeding 48 h before surgery and high risk according to the ASA scale (American Society of Anesthesiologists' Patient Assessment Scale).…”