How to operate on a giant heart with rare wind heart disease

  Recently, a multidisciplinary team completed “mitral valve replacement + tricuspid valvuloplasty + atrial volume reduction” for a patient with a rare wind heart disease with a huge heart and achieved success.  The patient, Dong, a 62-year-old female, was admitted to the hospital with “shortness of breath with swelling of lower limbs for 2 months”. She had “rheumatic heart disease” for more than 10 years and decided to come to our hospital for treatment after many hospitals had failed to treat her. The ultrasound showed rheumatic heart disease, severe mitral stenosis with incomplete closure, severe tricuspid valve incomplete closure, enlarged atria and pericardial effusion. The normal adult heart is only the size of a fist, the left and right atrial internal diameters are about 30 mm, and the heart-to-thorax ratio is about 45%, while the patient’s heart is the size of a volleyball, the right atrial internal diameter is 87 mm, the left atrial internal diameter is 64 mm, and the heart-to-thorax ratio is as high as 90%, and it has caused atrial fibrillation, moderate-to-severe pulmonary hypertension and cardiac insufficiency, and the ejection fraction of the heart is only 35% (60% in normal people). (approximately).  Because of the patient’s huge heart, poor cardiopulmonary function and heavy condition, the cardiology and surgery departments discussed in detail and formulated a well-designed treatment plan for the patient: the patient first adjusted the cardiopulmonary function in the cardiology department, and then transferred to the cardiothoracic surgery department for preoperative preparation after the initial improvement of cardiopulmonary function, and finally the cardiothoracic surgery department completed the operation. After nearly 20 days of careful preparation, on March 20, 2014, Director Liu Jian performed mitral valve prosthetic valve replacement, tricuspid valvuloplasty, and left and right atrial folding and decompression surgery under low temperature extracorporeal circulation for the patient, which was very successful. The patient’s condition is now stable and will be discharged from the hospital in the near future.  According to the introduction, rheumatic heart disease, also known as rheumatic heart valve disease, refers to the legacy of rheumatic heart disease to heart valve lesions mainly heart disease, the middle and late stage is often complicated by heart enlargement, but the heart is so huge, at home and abroad are rare. Patients with giant heart valve disease often have a long disease duration, heavy myocardial damage, poor cardiac function, often secondary to multiple organ dysfunction and poor systemic nutrition, low immunity, high surgical mortality, and are critical patients. For this type of surgery, not only does it require superb surgical skills, but also thoughtful and effective preoperative preparation and proper and strong postoperative cardiopulmonary support are also very critical, which is one of the signs reflecting the overall level of the hospital’s cardiothoracic surgery, internal medicine, critical care medicine, anesthesiology and other departments. The successful completion of valve replacement, valvuloplasty and cardiac decompression surgery in this patient marked a new step in the surgical treatment of critical heart valve disease in our hospital.