The Contegra conduit offers unique tailoring and suturing options for primary and redo RVOT reconstruction. At 27 months, its durability seems at least equivalent to homografts and is superior to porcine Tissuemed xenografts.

Contegra is worth being considered as an alternative to homografts.

The treatment of malaria tropica is becoming difficult because of the increasing drug resistance rates of Plasmodium falciparum against several of the currently available antimalarias. A fixed combination of rifampicin, co-trimoxazole and isoniazid (Cotrifazid^TM, CF) was found to be highly effective for the treatment of malaria tropica. The aim of the present study in Kenya was to scrutinize this finding in a 14-day trial. Patients with malaria tropica were given in an open, double-arm randomized study CF for 5 days, or chloroquine or pyrimethamine/sulphadoxine as the control. Because of an apparently better activity and tolerance of CF, the randomization had to be stopped after the enrollment of 50 patients. A total of 61 patients in both groups (35 of them between 2 months and 6 years of age) were available for final analysis. All 41 patients treated with CF, originally positive in their blood smears, turned negative; in 2 cases blood smear positivity reappeared on day 14. There were 7 failures in the control group, 4 of them a primary one. Four of those failures were turned negative with CF, 2 failed with CF also, and 1 disappeared. The tolerance of CF was excellent even in infants. In our experience, CF is very well suited for the treatment of malaria tropica, also in cases of apparent drug resistance of P. falciparum against other antimalarials, and even in severe cases of the disease.

According to the time status graphs, the use of bovine jugular veins for RVOT in patients younger than 25 years appears to lead to superior results when compared with cryopreserved homografts.

The partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide of the arterial blood were examined under strictly standardized conditions. The relationship of PaO₂ to age was found as Y_R = -0.40 age + 96.2 and PaCO₂ to age as Y_R = 0.03 age + 36.0. Furthermore, a correlation between PaCO₂ and PaO₂ could be calculated as Y_R = -0.073 PaO₂ + 43.0. An estimation of PaO₂ by biometrical data is given: Y_R= -0.39 age – 0.02 weight (kg) + 0.06 height (cm) + 85.9. The casual relations between blood partial pressures and age will be discussed in details.