Robotic mitral valve replacements with bioprosthetic valves in 52 patients: experience from a tertiary referral hospital.

OBJECTIVES: Robotic mitral valve replacement (MVR) emerged in the late 1990s as an alternative approach to conventional sternotomy. With the increased use of bioprosthetic valves worldwide and strong patient desire for minimally invasive procedures, the safety and feasibility of robotic MVRs with bioprosthetic valves require investigation. METHODS: Between January 2013 and May 2017, 52 consecutive patients underwent robotic MVRs using the da Vinci Si surgical system (Intuitive Surgical Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA). Their mean age was 55.1 ± 13.8 years, and mean EuroSCORE II was 2.25% ± 1.25%. Among the enrolled patients, 32 (61.5%) patients presented with preoperative atrial fibrillation, 6 (11.5%) patients had experienced embolic stroke and 5 (9.6%) patients had undergone previous cardiac surgery. The operations were performed using cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) under an arrested heart status. RESULTS: Five porcine valves and 47 bovine valves were implanted. A total of 38 (73.1%) patients received concomitant cardiac procedures, including 26 Cox-maze IV procedures, 12 tricuspid valve repairs and 5 atrial septal defect repairs. The mean aortic cross-clamp and CPB times were 141.3 ± 34.3 min and 217.1 ± 42.0 min, respectively. There was no operative mortality. During the mean follow-up of 29 ± 15 months, no prosthesis degeneration was noted. The average left atrial dimension exhibited a significant decrease from 51.4 ± 11.5 mm to 42.6 ± 10.1 mm. CONCLUSIONS: Robotic MVR with bioprosthetic valves is safe, feasible and reproducible. Mid-term results are encouraging. Both aortic cross-clamp and CPB times can be improved with experience.

A patient-identity security mechanism for electronic medical records during transit and at rest.

This paper proposes a patient-identity security mechanism, including an identity cipher/decipher and a user-authentication protocol, to ensure the confidentiality and authentication of patients' electronic medical records (EMRs) during transit and at rest. To support the confidentiality of an EMR, the identity cipher/decipher uses a data-hiding function and three logical-based functions to encrypt/decrypt a patient's identifying data and medical details in an EMR. The ciphertext of the patient's identifying data is patient-EMR related, whereas that of medical details is healthcare agent-EMR related. To support the authentication of an EMR, the user-authentication protocol based on a public key infrastructure uses certificates and dynamic cookies for verification/identification. The identity cipher has been simulated using C programming language running on a 1500 MHz Pentium PC with 512 MB of RAM. The experimental results show that healthcare agents can install large amounts of patients' encrypted EMRs in healthcare databases efficiently. In addition, separately storing the keys in a user's token and an EMR database for decryption increases the safety of patients' EMRs. For each user-authentication trail, the use of certificates and dynamic cookies for verification/identification ensures that only authorized users can obtain access to the EMR, and anyone involved cannot make false claims on the transmission made.

A data-hiding technique with authentication, integration, and confidentiality for electronic patient records.

A data-hiding technique called the "bipolar multiple-number base" was developed to provide capabilities of authentication, integration, and confidentiality for an electronic patient record (EPR) transmitted among hospitals through the Internet. The proposed technique is capable of hiding those EPR related data such as diagnostic reports, electrocardiogram, and digital signatures from doctors or a hospital into a mark image. The mark image could be the mark of a hospital used to identify the origin of an EPR. Those digital signatures from doctors and a hospital could be applied for the EPR authentication. Thus, different types of medical data can be integrated into the same mark image. The confidentiality is ultimately achieved by decrypting the EPR related data and digital signatures with an exact copy of the original mark image. The experimental results validate the integrity and the invisibility of the hidden EPR related data. This newly developed technique allows all of the hidden data to be separated and restored perfectly by authorized users.