Two patients of chronic mediastinitis after cardiac surgery were treated by omental transfer. Their previous cardiac operations were open mitral commissurotomy and aortic valve replacement. They underwent radical surgical therapy for mediastinitis 8 to 9 years after the first cardiac surgery. In both cases, the infection resulted from Dacron felt on the ascending aorta. Under the cardiopulmonary bypass, the Dacron felt and infected tissue were resected. And omental transfer was done to prevent recurrent infection. The patients have been follwed up for 10 to 14 months. And they have no symptoms of their mediastinitis during these periods. From these experience, we consider that omental transfer is very helpful to treat infectious complications after cardiac surgery.

From January, 1975 to December, 1989, 231 Björk-Shiley prostheses have been implanted in our hospital. During this period, we have experienced thrombosed valves in 0.69%/pt-yr for the aortic and 1.2%/pt-yr for the mitral position. Ten patients, four in the aortic and six in the mitral, have had thrombotic obstruction of a prosthetic valve. Seven cases of them had insufficient warfarin control. Clinical signs of thrombosed valves were dyspnea, thromboembolism and abnormal cardiac sound. Cineradiography was the most useful diagnostic method. Two cases underwent thrombolytic therapy, but one case died of cerebral complication and another needed an emergency cardiac operation 24 hours after the onset. Six survived among the eight surgical cases. We concluded that thrombosed valves mainly resulted from an insufficient anticoagulant therapy and an urgent surgical intervention would better be performed.

In this report, we describe our surgical experience with seven cases of acute type A aortic dissection which resulted from retrograde propagation from tears in the proximal descending arota. As an emergency procedure, we used a ringed intraluminal prosthesis in six patients and five of these survived. All survivors underwent follow up CT scanning during a period ranging from 4 months to 5.6 years after surgery, especially to evaluate the fate of the false lumen on the residual aorta. In four patients, the arch dissection has been completely occluded by thrombosis, however, it remained patent in one patient 2.3 years postoperatively in whom reentry was found in the arch vessel at the time of operation. Enlargement of the false lumen beyond the descending aorta was found in two patients. On the other hand, the results have been excellent in the most recent patient who underwent complete graft replacement of both the ascending aorta and aortic arch including the primary tear. The authors believe, therefore, that the complete graft replacement of the ascending aorta to the aortic arch should be considered as the procedure of choice in these particular patients. Only such procedures enable the complete healing of both the ascending and arch dissection, and reoperation can be confined to the area distal to the descending aorta, if necessary.