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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2009;137:1294-1295
© 2009 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Letter to the Editor

Reply to the Editor

^a Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, University Hospital Berne, Berne, Switzerland
^b Department of Cardiac Surgery, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Annescis, mi fili, quantilla sapientia mundus regatur?

[Do you not know, my son, how little wisdom rules the world?]

We thank Dr Gabbay for his letter to the editor regarding our recent article, "Deleterious Outcome of No-React-Treated Stentless Valved Conduits after Aortic Root Replacement: Why Were Warnings Ignored?"¹ We understand that Dr Gabbay is under considerable pressure because he is not only chief scientific officer of Shelhigh Inc (Union, NJ) but also founder and therefore directly dependent on the economic well-being of the company. We believe it is human nature that Dr Gabbay is biased in his perception of the events surrounding the aortic conduit NR-2000C (Shelhigh Inc) and other products. We, as representatives of a medical institution, have no interest in accusing Dr Gabbay, but we merely worry about the outcome observed in some of our patients after having used products from Shelhigh Inc.

In our department within the Academic Center for Cardiac Surgery Berne-Basel (1800 cardiac cases per year), surgery of the thoracic aorta accounts for approximately 15% of the overall surgical volume. This is due to the high prevalence of aortic aneurysms in the region and a high rate of referrals. We perform approximately 200 to 220 thoracic aortic procedures per year. We most recently published . . . [Full Text of this Article]