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The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Vol 78, 136-139, Copyright © 1979 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery and The Western Thoracic Surgical Association

ARTICLES

Survival following fracture of strut from mitral prosthesis with disc translocation

MT McEnany, EO Wheeler and WG Austen

Mechanical complications of prosthetic valves are increasingly rare. The acute, catastrophic nature of the symptoms associated with massive transvalvular regurgitation preclude survival except with immediate operation. In the patient described herein, two weld fractures of a Bjork-Shiley mitral prosthetic strut led to displacement of the valve occluder into the left atrium. The patient survived reoperation, following which the strut was detected radiologically in the left ventricular free wall. A slow, limited recovery resulted from his 5 preoperative hours of deep shock and coma. No complication attributable to the retained ventricular foreign body has been identified.