Acute prosthetic valve thrombosis in a patient with neoplastic disease--difficulties with anticoagulation therapy

A case of a 50-year-old woman with prosthetic mitral valve complicated by severe thrombosis as an effect of incorrect anticoagulation treatment during rectal cancer biopsy, is presented. During echocardiographic evaluation a dysfunction prosthetic mitral valve with extremely high maximal mitral gradient (50.2 mmHg) was found. The patient was qualified for surgical intervention and mechanical prosthetic mitral valve was replaced by a biological one. This report underlines the difficulties in the anticoagulation therapy in patients with prosthetic heart valves.