First experience of cardiac autotransplantation for giant left atrium treatment

Department of Adult Cardiac Surgery, Regional Cardiothoracic Surgery Center, Kuban State Medical University, Regional Clinic Hospital #1, 140 Rossiyskaya Street, 350086 Krasnodar, Russia *Corresponding author. Fax: +7 861 252 62 90. E-mail address : bolsy{at}rambler.ru (S.Y. Boldyrev). Giant left atrium is a pathology that causes a lot of different complications, therefore it is very important to perform volume reduction. In some cases left atrium volume reaches a huge size. There are a lot of different methods for left atrium reduction: from wall plication, multicomponent resection followed by restoration integrity of wall to autotransplantation. In spite of the relative simplicity of plications and resection, these methods do not always allow to reduce left atrium to the desired volume. Cardiac autotransplantation is the most radical approach to the correction of giant left atrium which allows reducing left atrium including interatrial septum. The successful result of giant left atrium surgical treatment (volume of left atrium is 2200 ml according to the data of computerized tomography) by the method of autotransplantation is presented in the article. Key Words: Giant left atrium; Reduction; Mitral valve