Unusual management of parturient patient with severe bicuspid aortic valve stenosis and congestive heart failure.

BACKGROUND: Critical aortic stenosis (AS) is an unusual cardiac pathology in pregnancy, but has significant impact on the fetal and maternal outcomes of pregnancy. Pregnant patients with aortic stenosis and heart failure represent a major challenge for the heart team and anesthesiologist who should balance the risks and benefits of different treatment strategies and their effects on the mother and fetus. CASE REPORT: We present a 26-year-old parturient who underwent cesarean section at 30 weeks of gestation under general anesthesia in the presence of cardiac surgical team followed by deferred aortic valve replacement after two weeks. CONCLUSION: This report describes the importance of multidisciplinary preoperative evaluation, and careful surgical and anesthetic planning to avoid the deterioration of perioperative cardiac condition in such patients.

Central Venous Cannulation of the Internal Jugular Vein Using Ultrasound-Guided and Anatomical Landmark Techniques.

BACKGROUND: Central venous cannulation is a current and important procedure used in the operating room and intensive care unit. Some studies have shown that the application of ultrasound-guided cannulation can improve the success rate of surgery, save time, reduce the number of required needlesticks, and mitigate many complications compared to anatomical landmark-guided cannulation. OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study was to draw a comparison between central venous cannulation of the internal jugular vein using ultrasound-guided and anatomical landmark-guided techniques. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A total of 321 patients scheduled for cardiac surgery in the surgical ward of a general hospital were randomly treated with central venous cannulation using either anatomical landmarks (150 patients) or ultrasound guidance (170 patients). The demographic data of patients, the success rate of cannulation, the execution time, and the number of attempts for successful cannulation as well as the complications were recorded and subjected to statistical analysis. RESULTS: The success rate of cannulation was 98.7% in the anatomical landmark-guided group and 99.4% in the ultrasound-guided group. The average operation times were 46.05 and 45.46 seconds in the anatomical landmark and ultrasound-guided groups, respectively. The two groups were not significantly different in terms of the success rates of treatment, the number of attempts, the time required for successful cannulation, or the prevalence of complications (P > 0.05) other than carotid artery puncture (P = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS: In our conditions, the use of an anatomical landmark-guided procedure was the preferred treatment method due to limited resources and a lack of adequate training.