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A 58-year-old woman, who had congestive heart failure due to mitral regurgitation after percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy, underwent mitral valve replacement. It is reported that mitral regurgitation more often occurs after PTMC in patients with severely calcified mitral valve or advanced subvalvular lesion than in those without. Our experience indicated that PTMC should be carefully performed in institutions which have a surgical team ready for emergency operation.

A 17-year-old male with tricuspid atresia who underwent a modified Fontan procedure died due to heart failure 4 years and 6 months after operation. At autopsy a thrombus was found in the right atrial appendage. From the experience, it might be recommended to excise the appendage when the modified Fontan procedure leaving the appendage was employed. In addition, anticoagulation therapy as well as regular echocardiographic examination for detecting thrombus formation should be considered after the operation.

The postoperative deep body temperature rhythms of fifteen patients who received aorto-coronary bypass surgery (group I), and of seven patients who received non-cardiac major surgery (group II), were studied. Postoperative patients, especially those who received aortocoronary bypass surgery, showed greatly disturbed deep body temperature rhythm. There existed infradian and ultradian rhythm in both groups, and there existed two patients in group I who did not show sinusoidal rhythm. The patients of group I also showed a longer period of rhythm than did those of group II. The mesor and amplitude of the patients in group I showed a greater individual variation than did those in group II. The acrophase of both groups deviated widely. The patients who underwent cardiac surgery needed a longer time for temperature rhythm recovery than did those who underwent general surgery.

Thirty-five patients with tetralogy of Fallot (TF), were studied for the postoperative factors which might have some effect on the presence and severity of ventricular premature contraction (VPC) and exercise performance (EP). Using the factors, we tried to make VPC- and EP-scores. Of the 35 patients, 12 (34%) showed VPCs of Lown's grade 2 or higher (group B) and 23 (66%) were free from significant VPCs (group A). Group B patients were found to have significantly higher postoperative right to left ventricular peak systolic pressure ratios (RV/LV) and higher right ventricular peak systolic pressures (RVP) than those of group A. The right ventricular regional wall motion (RVRWM) in the right ventricular outflow tracts of group B patients showed akinetic or paradoxical movements. VPC-scores using RV/LV, RVP and RVRWM showed that 11 patients, whose score were 0, were free from significant VPCs and showed that 6 of 7 patients (86%), whose score were 3, demonstrated significant VPCs. It was shown that RV/LV, left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), CTR and pulmonary regurgitation (PR) affected the exercise tolerance. In the case of EP-scores, using RV/LV, LVEF, CTR and PR, the endurance times of the patients who had higher scores seemed to be shorter. VPC- and EP-scores as a tool for predicting the presence of VPCs and the level of exercise performance seem to be quite useful.