transcatheteraortic valve implantation, first introduced in 2002, has been established as an alternative modality for patients deemed not suitable for open-heart surgery. the anatomical vicinity of the atrioventricular node and the his bundle to the non-coronary and rightcoronary aortic cusps predisposes patients to conduction abnormalities in case of severe calcification or mechanical trauma d...

BACKGROUND Long-term outcome of patients treated with a St. Jude prosthetic heart valve was reported by investigators in Lausanne, Switzerland. This article quantifies the mortality and morbidity implications of single or multiple heart valve replacement. RESULTS After hospital discharge, mortality ratios were highest for duration 5-10 years, roughly comparable in patients who received a sing...

FEBRUARY 2004 I ENDOVASCULAR TODAY I 31 D uring the last 2 decades, percutaneous endovascular therapies have revolutionized the treatment of coronary artery disease. However, the development and dissemination of percutaneous approaches to heart valve disease have been less rapid. Whereas rheumatic mitral stenosis and congenital aortic stenosis are effectively managed by balloon valvuloplasty in...

INTRODUCTION Aortic heart valve dysfunction is commonly treated with replacement of the valve. To overcome the shortcomings of currently used mechanical valves, xenografts and homografts, efforts are being made to create fully autologous heart valve replacements using the concepts of tissue engineering. To this end autologous cells are seeded onto pre-shaped biodegradable scaffolds and cultured...

The design and development of functional engineered tissues is dependent on multiple considerations, with biomechanics paramount for load-bearing constructs such as tissue engineered heart valves. As the cryopreserved allograft is the current standard for valve replacement in pediatric patients, identifying and quantifying essential structural–mechanical properties of the native valve leaflet i...

Heart valve anomalies are some of the most common congenital heart defects, yet neither the genetic nor the epigenetic forces guiding heart valve development are well understood. When functioning normally, mature heart valves prevent intracardiac retrograde blood flow; before valves develop, there is considerable regurgitation, resulting in reversing (or oscillatory) flows between the atrium an...