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Biomedical subjects

G Cuccaroni

Publications and source records attributed to G Cuccaroni.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1989

[Postoperative constrictive pericarditis].

Seven cases of postoperative constrictive pericarditis (PCP) were discovered in a retrospective study of patients given heart surgery in a hospital receiving patients from all over Italy in 1970-85. Five of those patients had received surgery for chronic rheumatic heart disease, 2 for congenital heart defects. Four had received a second heart operation before the pericardial condition was recognised. All were females and all presented systemic venous hypertension (one of them only after acute doses of physiological solution) with thickening of the pericardial layers revealed by sonography. In six cases the electrocardiographic ventricular complexes were normal or increased in amplitude and the heart/chest ratio was greater than 0.55. Pericardial knock was masked by natural or artificial atrioventricular valve opening noises in 6 cases. In one case only there were pericardial calcifications or signs of an earlier postpericardiotomy syndrome. The haemodynamic investigation revealed signs of ventricular diastolic constriction in 6 patients. Three patients died from complications of cardiac cirrhosis: 2 of them had previously received partial pericardiectomy. Another two, given the same operation, preserved a reasonable functional capacity 5 and 10 years after the pericardiectomy. One patient in NYHA functional class III has so far refused haemodynamic assessment (and surgical treatment) of the pericardial disease. Finally, the last patient complains only of attacks of heart palpitation caused by atrial flutter and controlled by antiarrhythmic treatment.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adult↗
PubMed1985

[Aortic coarctation surgically treated in the 1st year of life. Results in 36 cases].

Thirty-six infants under one year of age underwent surgical repair of coarctation of the aorta between 1968 and 1983 in our institution. Coarctation was isolated or associated to a patent ductus arteriosus in sixteen cases, while in twenty it was associated with significant intracardiac disease. Twenty-nine patients were operated on in the first three months of life and in twenty a severe heart failure was present before the operation. Nine patients (25%) died while in the hospital: all of them were less than three months of age and all but one were affected by major intracardiac anomalies and severe heart failure. Surgical repair was by subclavian flap aortoplasty in twenty-nine cases, resection with end-to-end anastomosis in three, patch aortoplasty in three and Blalock-Park anastomosis in one. Operative mortality was unaffected by the surgical technique. The surviving children were followed-up for 30 +/- 7 months; one late death occurred suddenly, two months after the repair of a ventricular septal defect. An arm/leg pressure gradient, indicative of recoarctation, was detected in five cases: only one had been repaired by the subclavian flap technique, while the others were the only survivors of the end-to-end anastomosis and patch aortoplasty group. Subclavian flap aortoplasty is suggested as the operation of choice for coarctation of the aorta in the first year of life.

Aortic Coarctation↗