Tag Archives: mitral

Figure 1. The Ionescu-Shiley pericardial xenografts Material choice It was a stroke of Ionescu’s genius, industry and tenacity that among all the materials available at the time, such as polyurethane, ivalon, fascia lata and dacron, he finally chose glutaraldehyde-treated bovine pericardium to construct his valves. To arrive at this point Marian Ionescu had already been on a 14-year journey of invention, which started in 1957 and included the three-pronged coronet design of the aortic valve used to this day. Over the last five decades, we have now realised that the pericardium has four unique defining characteristics – pliability, durabil

Coronary intervention – Trials As the first ever blinded, sham-controlled, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) trial, demonstrating a non-statistically significant increase in exercise time at six weeks from PCI over optimal medical therapy (OMT), to say the publication of ORBITA (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in Stable Angina) last year caused a stir would be quite the understatement. Regardless of your interpretation of the data,1 or ensuing hyperbole,2 unanswered questions certainly remained. Presentation of the previously blinded, invasive physiology data in the opening late-breaking clinical trials session here was therefore