ardio 77-year-old man presented with increasingly ymptomatic severe aortic stenosis (AS). Echocardioram showed an aortic valve area of 0.6 cm and a ean pressure gradient of 57 mm Hg. It could not be scertained conclusively if the valve was tricuspid or icuspid due to heavy calcification (Figs. 1A and 1B). ortic annulus was 20 mm in diameter. Left ventriclar ejection fraction was 40%. At cardiac...

Aortic stenosis is one of the more commonly encountered disease processes in valvular heart disease, affecting over 300,000 people worldwide. Surgical replacement of the aortic valve has been the mainstay of therapy for decades; however, in certain patients with prohibitively high-risk comorbidities, surgery is not a viable option. The advent of transcatheter aortic valve replacement has come t...

6. Webb JG, Pasupati S, Humphries K, Thompson C, Altwegg L, Moss R, et al. Percutaneous transarterial aortic valve replacement in selected high-risk patients with aortic stenosis. Circulation. 2007;116:755-63. 7. Grube E, Schuler G, Buellesfeld L, Gerckens U, Linke A, Wenaweser P, et al. Percutaneous aortic valve replacement for severe aortic stenosis in high-risk patients using the second and ...

In the July issue of the European Heart Journal an experimental study was reported on the percutaneous implantation of heart valves in the systemic circulation. Since the report by Bonhoeffer et al. in 2000 on the first percutaneous pulmonary valve replacement in man, the two authors felt challenged to move to the percutaneous implantation of the aortic valve. Despite many commercial activities...

Percutaneous valve replacement is developing into an effective and reproducible therapy for aortic valve stenosis. Initial experience suggests that outcomes compare favorably with conventional valve surgery in selected patients with comorbidities, such as advanced age. Caution is prudent, however, in the future a more mature procedure might represent a viable alternative for a much broader rang...

Percutaneous catheter-based interventions are an emerging area in the treatment of valvular heart disease. Percutaneous aortic balloon valvuloplasty was initially introduced by Cribier et al1 in 1985 for patients with severe calcific aortic stenosis. This technique results in moderate hemodynamic improvement and significant clinical improvement, but it is associated with significant periprocedu...

Aortic valve replacement (AVR) is the only effective treatment for symptomatic aortic stenosis (AS). In the ideal candidate, the operative mortality associated with AVR is 4%.1 With increasing age, patients with AS acquire other comorbidities that increase their surgical risk to prohibitive levels, limiting their surgical options. It is estimated that at least 30% of the patients with severe AS...

We describe the successful closure of an aortic paravalvular bioprosthetic valve leak with the simultaneous percutaneous deployment of two vascular plugs.