Interest in aortic valve repair has been growing for more than a decade. Since ross and associates 1) first introduced single cusp enlargement, cusp extension or replacement of aortic valve insufficiency has been used with rheumatic and congenital aortic valve disease. There is more interest on the effectiveness and durability of the leaflet extension technique with autologous pericardium and long-term clinical results. A 29-year-old woman had suffered from aortic valve insufficiency after congenital heart disease operation. Echocardiography and computed tomography showed right cusp shortening with severe aortic valve regurgitation. We perfomed right cusp extension with bovine pericardium and central plication. According to some reports, the stability of autologous pericardium being better than bovine pericardium, but this case could not use a autologous pericardium because of a previous operation. The patient had an uneventful postoperative course and pregnancy became possible.

A 58-year-old man presented with hydrothorax, an irregular heart rate, and symptoms of heart failure approximately equivalent to the New York Heart Association (NYHA) class 2. Echocardiographic and cardiac catheterization findings suggested constrictive pericarditis, but CT scans revealed only slight thickening of the pericardium. He had liver cirrhosis, to the extent that surgery appeared to be high risk in this case. The patient was thus managed medically but showed no tendency fowards improvement despite 6 months of treatment. He was then given a diagnosis of having hepatic dysfunction due to a congestive liver associated with constrictive pericarditis. Pericardiectomy was then performed. Postoperatively, his hepatic function improved markedly and his symptoms disappeared. This case is described, with reference to the literature.

We encountered left main coronary artery hypoplasia in a 14-year-old boy. He had a history of syncope after exercise. Computed tomography revealed hypoplasia of the left main coronary artery and the syncope on exertion was diagnosed as due to myocardial ischemia. We performed off-pump coronary artery bypass (OPCAB) graft using the left internal thoracic artery. The postoperative course was uneventful and chest symptoms were not recognized in daily life. Left main coronary artery hypoplasia is rare, but is associated with adverse cardiac events, including sudden cardiac death. In cases like this, coronary artery bypass graft is indicated.

A 75-year-old woman presented with dyspnea, and was admitted urgently on a diagnosis of concurrent acute cardiac insufficiency. Because of her low blood pressure and respiratory failure, care was started in the intensive care unit. A transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) showed severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR). We concluded that her cardiogenic shock was caused by acute right heart failure with severe TR and therefore carried out emergency surgery. We noted expansion of the tricuspid valve ring and shortening of the tendinous cord, and the leaflet was pulled into the right ventricle side. Initially we attempted a tricuspid annuloplasty (TAP), but it proved difficult to control the TR. We therefore performed a tricuspid valve replacement (TVR). The patient was moved from the intensive care unit to a general ward 10 days after the operation, and to another hospital 26 days later.

A 62 year-old man presented with severe septic shock complicated by prosthetic graft infection, 7 years after aortic root replacement with a Freestyle stentless valve and graft replacement of the ascending aorta. We initially managed the patient with antimicrobial therapy for 2 months and subsequently surgery was performed, replacing the infected aortic graft with rifampicin-bonded prostheses, and added omentopexy. The infection was cured and has not recurred.

A 68-year-old man visited our hospital with a high fever with chills 4 years after aortic valve replacement. Streptococcal species were cultured with a venous blood culture. An echocardiogram and a cardiac computed tomography (CT) scan revealed a perivalvular abscess (11 mm×15 mm). Because his prosthetic valve functioned well, he was treated with intravenous ampicillin and gentamicin. Cardiac CT scan performed at 6 weeks showed the perivalvular abscess to have disappeared and he was discharged from the hospital. He is free from recurrence of the abscess 20 months after the initiation of therapy.

A 25-year-old man with a previous diagnosis of congenital bicuspid aortic valve presented with a fever of unknown origin for 3 months. Transthoracic echocardiography revealed vegetation on the mitral valve leaflet. Transesohageal echocardiography revealed severe aortic regurgitation and a mitral valve leaflet aneurysm. Despite intensive antibiotic therapy, his clinical condition did not improve, so he underwent aortic and mitral valve repair. The aortic valve was shown to be unicuspid intraoperatively. We made a new commissure, then mitral valve aneurysm was resected and a new leaflet was made using the pericardium. There was almost no regurgitation seen on postoperative echocardiography.

The prognosis of rhabdomyosarcoma is poor, and its estimated survival is less than year even after radical resection. We report a patient with recurrent rhabdomyosarcoma 11 years after obtaining remission by radical surgical resection and chemotherapy.

We report the findings in an 82-year-old man diagnosed with acute type A aortic dissection. Computed tomography scan showed that the primary entry site was located in the ascending aorta. This finding was confirmed intraoperatively, and emergency ascending aorta replacement of ascending aorta was performed. He subsequently died on postoperative 7 day due to descending aortic rupture. During autopsy, another entry site was found at the root of the brachiocephalic trunk with a patent false lumen, which might have led to the descending aortic rupture.

Although there have been several studies that compared the efficacy of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), the impact of off-pump CABG (OPCAB) has not been well elucidated. Among the 9,877 patients undergoing first myocardial revascularization enrolled in the CREDO-Kyoto Registry (a registry of first-time PCI using bare-metal stents and CABG patients in Japan), 6,327 patients with multivessel and/or left main disease were enrolled in the present study (PCI 3,877/CABG 2,450). Median follow-up was 3.5 years. Propensity-score-adjusted all-cause mortality after PCI was higher than that of CABG (hazard ratio [95% confidence interval] : 1.37 [1.15-1.63], p< 0.01). The incidence of stroke was lower after PCI than that after CABG (0.75 [0.59-0.96], p=0.02). The predicted risk of operative mortality (PROM) of each patient of on-pump/off-pump CABG was calculated by the logistic EuroSCORE. Patients were divided into tertiles based on their PROM. The hazard ratio of the incidence of stroke in on-pump CABG compared with off-pump CABG in the high-risk tertile was 1.80 ([1.07-3.02], p=0.03). The adjusted overall mortality was not significantly different between the two procedures even in the high-risk tertile (1.44 [0.98-2.11], p=0.06). In patients with multivessel and/or left main disease, CABG was associated with better survival outcomes than PCI using bare-metal stents. Off-pump CABG as opposed to on-pump CABG is associated with short-and long-term benefits in stroke prevention in patients with higher risk as evaluated by the EuroSCORE. No survival benefit of OPCAB was shown, regardless of preoperative risk level.