Infective endocarditis is an infection of the inner surface of the heart, usually the valves. Signs and symptoms may include fever, small areas of bleeding into the skin, heart murmur, feeling tired, and low red blood cell count. Complications may include backward blood flow in the heart, heart failure – the heart struggling to pump a sufficient amount of blood to meet the body's needs, abnormal electrical conduction in the heart, stroke, and kidney failure.
Cardiothoracic surgery is the field of medicine involved in surgical treatment of organs inside the thoracic cavity — generally treatment of conditions of the heart, lungs, and other pleural or mediastinal structures.
Aortic valve replacement is a procedure whereby the failing aortic valve of a patient's heart is replaced with an artificial heart valve. The aortic valve may need to be replaced because:
Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub, is an Egyptian retired professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Imperial College London, best known for his early work in repairing heart valves with surgeon Donald Ross, adapting the Ross procedure, where the diseased aortic valve is replaced with the person's own pulmonary valve, devising the arterial switch operation (ASO) in transposition of the great arteries, and establishing the heart transplantation centre at Harefield Hospital in 1980 with a heart transplant for Derrick Morris, who at the time of his death was Europe's longest-surviving heart transplant recipient. Yacoub subsequently performed the UK's first combined heart and lung transplant in 1983.
Walter Randolph "Ranny" Chitwood, Jr. is known for his work as a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University located in Greenville, North Carolina.
David H. Adams is an American cardiac surgeon and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Professor and Chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Dr. Adams is a recognized leader in the field of heart valve surgery and mitral valve reconstruction. As director of Mount Sinai Mitral Valve Repair Center, he has set national benchmarks with >99% degenerative mitral valve repair rates, while running one of the largest valve repair programs in the United States. Dr. Adams is the co-inventor of 2 mitral valve annuloplasty repair rings – the Carpentier-McCarthy-Adams IMR ETlogix Ring and the Carpentier-Edwards Physio II Annuloplasty Ring, and is a senior consultant with royalty agreements with Edwards Lifesciences. He is also the inventor of the Tri-Ad Adams Tricuspid Annuloplasty ring with a royalty agreement with Medtronic. He is a co-author with Professor Alain Carpentier of the benchmark textbook in mitral valve surgery Carpentier's Reconstructive Valve Surgery. He is also the National Co-Principal Investigator of the FDA pivotal trial of the Medtronic-CoreValve transcatheter aortic valve replacement device.
Cardiothoracic anesthesiology is a subspeciality of the medical practice of anesthesiology, devoted to the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care of adult and pediatric patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery and related invasive procedures.
The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is an independent non-profit, non-governmental professional association that works to advance the prevention, diagnosis and management of diseases of the heart and blood vessels, and improve scientific understanding of the heart and vascular system. This is done by:
Jonathan L. Halperin is an American cardiologist and the author of Bypass (ISBN 0-89586-509-2), among the most comprehensive works on the subject of coronary artery bypass surgery. In addition, he is the Robert and Harriet Heilbrunn Professor of Medicine at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine as well as Director of Clinical Cardiology in the Zena and Michael A. Wierner Cardiovascular Institute at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, both in New York City. Halperin was the principal cardiologist responsible for both the design and execution of the multi-center Stroke Prevention in Atrial Fibrillation (SPAF) clinical trials, funded by the National Institutes of Health, which helped develop antithrombotic strategies to prevent stroke, and he subsequently directed the SPORTIF clinical trials, which evaluated the first oral direct thrombin inhibitor for prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation.
Lars Georg Svensson is a cardiac surgeon and the chairman of the heart and vascular institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is the Director of the Aorta Center, Director of the Marfan Syndrome and Connective Tissue Disorder Clinic, and is a professor of surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and Case Western Reserve University. He is also the Director of Quality Outcomes and Process Improvement for the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery and Affiliate Cardiac Surgery Program at Cleveland Clinic.
James L. Cox is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and medical innovator best known for the development of the Cox maze procedure for treatment of atrial fibrillation in 1987.
A hybrid cardiac surgical procedure in a narrow sense is defined as a procedure that combines a conventional, more invasive surgical part with an interventional part, using some sort of catheter-based procedure guided by fluoroscopy imaging in a hybrid operating room (OR) without interruption. The hybrid technique has a reduced risk of surgical complications and has shown decreased recovery time. It can be used to treat numerous heart diseases and conditions and with the increasing complexity of each case, the hybrid surgical technique is becoming more common.
Gilles Dreyfus is a French cardiac surgeon.
Christian-Friedrich Vahl is a German cardiac surgeon. He is director of the Clinic for Heart, Thorax and Vascular surgery at the University of Mainz.
Nagarur Gopinath was an Indian surgeon and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is credited with the first successful performance of open heart surgery in India which he performed in 1962. He served as the honorary surgeon to two Presidents of India and was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1974 and Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian medical award in 1978 from the Government of India.
Christoph Huber MD, FMH, FECTS is a Swiss cardiac surgeon who is a professor and the head of the Division of Cardiac and Vascular Surgery at the University Hospital Geneva, Switzerland.
Ulf Landmesser is a German specialist for cardiology and internal medicine. He is professor at the Institute for Health Research in Berlin and Head of the Medical Clinic of Cardiology at the Charité in Berlin. Landmesser is known for his work on coronary interventions and modern methods of catheter-based heart valve therapy.
Uwe Klima is UAE based professor of surgery and a faculty member at the Hannover Medical School, Germany. He also is the medical and managing director at German Heart Centre, Dubai.
Vasyl Lazoryshynets is a Ukrainian cardiac surgeon, director of the Mykola Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine.
Mario F.L. Gaudino MSCE, FEBCTS, FACC, FAHA is an Italian cardiothoracic surgeon who is the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Professor in Cardiothoracic Surgery (II) of Weill Cornell Medicine and an attending cardiac surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center. He is an expert in coronary revascularization and clinical trialist. He is known for demonstrating that posterior pericardiotomy at the time of cardiac surgery reduced the incidence of post-operative atrial fibrillation and pericardial effusion. He is also the principal investigator for the upcoming multinational ROMA and ROMA-Women trials investigating radial artery grafting in coronary artery bypass grafting. He is also a principal investigator for the upcoming STICH3C trial, comparing coronary artery bypass grafting and percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with low ejection fraction.
