[Ventricular septal perforation].
As a mechanical complication of acute myocardial infarction, ventricular septal perforation (VSP) occurs mostly within 1 week after infarction. Although incidence of the disease is only 1-2% of transmural infarction, patients are into serious condition progressively once it happens. Even if patients were treated medically under intensive care protocol, they would almost always present congestive heart failure due to massive volume overload. Hence VSP should be treated surgically as soon as possible after its onset. We believe that infarct exclusion technique is standard procedure of surgical treatment, because it is relatively simple, makes less bleeding and gives minimal damage to right ventricle. Acute mortality has come down to 10-20% after introduction of this procedure. Cardiogenic shock before surgery, severe right heart failure and high age are important predictors of death. It is still difficult to save patients who are in severe cardiogenic shock with very low ventricular function. New treatments such as ventricular assist device, heart transplantation and regeneration therapy are waited for this high risk group of patients.