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The incidence of infective endocarditis in patients with bioprosthetic heart valves is over 100 times that of the general population with(1) the viability of 9 microorganisms strains (colony-forming units) and the infectivity degree of 3 viral strains (cellular infection capacity) were evaluated after suspension in the polyphenolic solution. (2) Leaflets from a treated and untreated commercial surgical valve model were incubated with a known concentration of(1) The polyphenolic solution proved to be effective in eliminating microorganisms strains guaranteeing the killing of at least 99.9%. The effectiveness is particularly relevant againstThe data suggest an interesting protective effect against infections and bacterial adhesiveness by a polyphenolic-based solution. Further studies will plan to extend the panel of microorganisms for the evaluation of the anti-adhesive effect; however, the use of optimized polyphenolic blends could lead to the development of new treatments capable to make transcatheter-valve substitutes more resistant to infection.

International audience; OBJECTIVE: To verify the rate of thromboembolic and hemorrhagic complications during the first 6 months after mitral valve repair and to assess whether the type of antithrombotic therapy influenced clinical outcome. METHODS: Retrospective data were retrieved from 19 centers. Inclusion criteria were isolated mitral valve repair with ring implantation. Exclusion criteria were ongoing or past atrial fibrillation and any combined intraoperative surgical procedures. The study cohort consisted of 1882 patients (aged 58 +/- 15 years; 36% women), and included 1517 treated with an oral anticoagulant (VKA group) and 365 with antiplatelet drugs (APLT group). Primary efficacy outcome was the incidence of arterial thromboembolic events within 6 months and primary safety outcome was the incidence of major bleeding within 6 months. Propensity matching was performed to obtain 2 comparable cohorts (858 vs 286). RESULTS: No differences were detected for arterial embolic complications in matched cohort (1.6% VKA vs 2.1% APLT; P = .50). Conversely, patients in the APLT group showed lower incidence of major bleeding complications (3.9% vs 0.7%; P = .01). Six-month mortality rate was significantly higher in the VKA group (2.7% vs 0.3%; P = .02). Multivariable analysis in the matched cohort found VKA as independent predictor of major bleeding complications and mortality at 6 months. CONCLUSIONS: Vitamin K antagonist therapy was not superior to antiplatelet therapy to prevent thromboembolic complications after mitral valve repair. Our data suggest that oral anticoagulation may carry a higher bleeding risk compared with antiplatelet therapy, although these results should be confirmed in an adequately powered randomized controlled trial

We evaluated our experience to investigate if the use of bilateral internal mammary artery (BIMA) grafting, with or without complementary saphenous vein grafts (SVGs), if compared to the use of single IMA and SVG(s), increases the quality of the results of coronary bypass grafting in patients younger than 75 years who undergo first myocardial revascularization.From September 1986 to December 1999, 1602 patients younger than 75 years underwent first myocardial revascularization using left internal mammary (LIMA) to left anterior descending (LAD) and SVG(s) (n=576) or BIMA (one IMA on the LAD) with or without SVG(s) (n=1026). Propensity score analysis was used to select 1140 patients with the same preoperative and operative characteristics. Thirty day outcome was evaluated as well as 10-year freedom from death by any cause, cardiac death, acute myocardial infarction (AMI), AMI in a grafted area (GA), redo/PTCA, redo/PTCA in a GA, target cardiac events (death from cardiac cause, AMI in a GA, redo/PTCA in a GA), and any event. Follow-up ranged from 3.5 to 16.8 years (mean 7.3+/-4.8 years).Thirty day mortality was 2.8% in Group LIMA and 2.1% in Group BIMA, P n.s.; incidence of major complications was, respectively, 7.0 versus 5.4%, P n.s. Group BIMA showed better 10-year freedom from cardiac death (96.5+/-0.8 versus 91.3+/-1.4, P=0.0288), AMI (98.0+/-0.6 versus 94.3+/-1.2, P=0.0180), AMI in a GA (98.4+/-0.6 versus 94.7+/-1.1, P=0.0057) and target cardiac events (93.9+/-1.1 versus 86.3+/-1.8, P=0.0388). Cox analysis confirmed that LIMA+SV(s) was an independent risk factor from lower freedom from cardiac death, AMI, AMI in a GA and cardiac events.As freedom from cardiac events is a main target of any revascularization procedure, we think that, when a patient undergoes a first coronary surgery and is younger than 75 years, BIMA grafting should not be denied, especially if his life expectancy is higher than 10 years.

The impact of myocardial revascularization without cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) was evaluated in a series of consecutive patients with multivessel disease.From May 21, 1997 to November 30, 2000, 1,843 consecutive patients underwent isolated myocardial revascularization. From this total, 919 patients were done without CPB (group A, 49.9%) and 924 patients were done with CPB (group B, 50.1%). Patients that converted from without CPB to with CPB were included in group A. Thirty-three variables were evaluated with univariate and multivariate analysis to identify the independent variables predictive of higher incidence of early mortality, acute myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accident, and early major events.Early mortality was 2.2% (group A, 1.4%; group B, 3.0%; p = 0.016), acute myocardial infarction incidence was 1.8% (group A, 1.1%; group B, 2.6%; p = 0.027), cerebrovascular accident incidence was 0.9% (group A, 0.8%; group B, 1.0%; p = not significant), and early major events incidence was 6.7% (group A, 5.3%; group B, 8.2%; p0.001). Stepwise logistic regression analysis showed that CPB was an independent risk factor for higher mortality (odds ratio, 2.2; p = 0.0217), higher incidence of acute myocardial infarction (odds ratio, 2.5; p = 0.0185), and higher incidence of early major events (odds ratio, 1.8, p = 0.0034).When CPB was not used, patients experienced lower early mortality and incidences of acute myocardial infarction were less complicated, both at univariate analysis and stepwise logistic regression analysis.