Nadira Hamid

Injuries to the Aorta, Aortic Annulus, and Left Ventricle During Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement: Management and Outcomes.

The experience with transcatheter aortic valve replacement is increasing worldwide; however, the incidence of potentially catastrophic cardiac or aortic complications has not decreased. In most cases, significant injuries to the aorta, aortic valve annulus, and left ventricle require open surgical repair. However, the transcatheter aortic valve replacement patient presents a unique challenge as many patients are at high or prohibitive surgical risk and, therefore, an open surgical procedure may not be feasible or appropriate. Consequently, prevention of these potentially catastrophic injuries is vital, and practitioners need to understand when open surgical repair is required and when alternative management strategies can be used. The goal of this article is to provide an overview of current management and prevention strategies for major complications involving the aorta, aortic valve annulus, and left ventricle.

Electromechanical wave imaging and electromechanical wave velocity estimation in a large animal model of myocardial infarction

Echocardiography is often used in the clinic for detection and characterization of myocardial infarction. Electromechanical wave imaging (EWI) is a non-invasive ultrasound-based imaging technique based on time-domain incremental motion and strain estimation that can evaluate changes in contractility in the heart. In this study, electromechanical activation is assessed in infarcted heart to determine whether EWI is capable of detecting and monitoring infarct formation. Additionally, methods for estimating electromechanical wave (EW) velocity are presented, and changes in the EW propagation velocity after infarct formation are studied. Five (n  =  5) adult mongrels were used in this study. Successful infarct formation was achieved in three animals by ligation of the left anterior descending (LAD) coronary artery. Dogs were survived for a few days after LAD ligation and monitored daily with EWI. At the end of the survival period, dogs were sacrificed and TTC (tetrazolium chloride) staining confirmed the formation and location of the infarct. In all three dogs, as soon as day 1 EWI was capable of detecting late-activated and non-activated regions, which grew over the next few days. On final day images, the extent of these regions corresponded to the location of infarct as confirmed by staining. EW velocities in border zones of infarct were significantly lower post-infarct formation when compared to baseline, whereas velocities in healthy tissues were not. These results indicate that EWI and EW velocity might help with the detection of infarcts and their border zones, which may be useful for characterizing arrhythmogenic substrate.

Mitraclip Followed by Surgical Aortic Valve Replacement: Hybrid Techniques for Regurgitant Aortic and Mitral Valve Disease

With the advent of percutaneous valve interventions, the landscape for management of high-risk valve replacement and repair has changed dramatically. Transcatheter valve repair/replacement techniques can be used in conjunction with open surgery to facilitate a hybrid approach in patients with multivalve disease. We present a case of staged hybrid valve repair followed by surgical replacement for a high-risk patient with mitral regurgitation and aortic regurgitation. This case illustrates the effectiveness of the staged hybrid approach for high-risk patients with incomplete transcatheter options. We expect these techniques to play an increasingly larger role in the treatment algorithm for high-risk multivalve disease.

Interventional Echocardiography: Current Role and Progress

Advances in cardiovascular interventional techniques have enabled percutaneous treatment for a wide spectrum of non-coronary cardiovascular diseases, also known as ‘structural heart diseases (SHD)’. As these therapies are performed without an open-heart surgery, the use of echocardiography is crucial for detailed visualisation of cardiac anatomy, and to provide guidance for optimal success of these catheter-based interventions. This review will describe the key role of the echocardiographic techniques and imaging protocols that are currently used in different catheter-based SHD interventions.

THE EFFECT OF OVERSIZING ON THE HEMODYNAMIC PERFORMANCE OF THE SAPIEN 3 TRANSCATHETER HEART VALVE

Sizing algorithms for the SAPIEN 3 recommend less oversizing. Whether oversizing of the valve affects hemodynamics of the transcatheter heart valve (THV) is unknown. 63 high surgical risk patients with severe, symptomatic aortic stenosis had transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) with the

TCT-698 Acute changes in mitral annular geometery after Mitraclip procedure in functional and degenerative mitral regurgitation

Percutaneous edge-to-edge mitral valve repair with the MitraClip device has been shown to be effective in reducing the severity of mitral regurgitation (MR), with resultant improvements in clinical outcomes. However, the actual changes in mitral annular geometry has not been well described. We aim