Overview
Pericardiocentesis and chest tube represent successful decompression of a selected pericardial or pleural obstruction. They rebuild the reference without that lesion and preserve unrelated pathology and user loading experiments.
The Experimental valve section represents successful later valve-treatment endpoints. “Experimental” describes the simulator implementation, not the clinical status of the procedure. Anatomy, selection, procedural steps and outcome probabilities are not simulated.
Pericardial and pleural decompression
Pericardiocentesis removes tamponade; chest tube removes the tension-pneumothorax component. Filling, forward flow, pressure, oxygenation and imaging then follow the remaining combined state. Selecting a procedure with no matching lesion does not create a generic hemodynamic benefit.
Drain placement, access, bleeding, recurrent accumulation, pleural air leak and time to recovery are omitted. The CXR illustration does not imply that treatment should wait for imaging.
Valve endpoints
Mitral/tricuspid clips address selected regurgitant lesions; prosthetic examples address the corresponding stenosis or regurgitation. TAVI requires the selected native AS model; isolated AR is not assumed to be suitable for that button. One treatment per valve is selected, while different valves can be treated together.
The engine removes the corrected native waveform contribution and retains incomplete filling/flow recovery, chronic cavity history, coexisting myocardial disease and pulmonary vascular load. An aortic tissue-prosthesis example retains a small flow-dependent LV–aortic gradient. It is not a mechanical valve simulation.
Incomplete recovery and adverse examples
The successful-endpoint model does not predict residual leak, prosthesis mismatch, anesthesia, afterload mismatch, conduction injury or procedural complications. Clip selection with coexisting inflow stenosis intentionally adds obstruction rather than assuming benefit. Read the selected intervention reference for clinical context.
References & further reading