Percutaneous heart valve replacement and repair
Journal Title: Αρχεία Ελληνικής Ιατρικής - Year 2008, Vol 25, Issue 3
Abstract
The new millennium, with its rapid technical and technological developments, inevitably brought a new era in the field of interventional cardiac treatment, that of percutaneous heart valve replacement and repair. According to the traditional surgical technique of valve replacement, the damaged valve is removed and a new bioprosthetic graft planted in its place. This method, despite its high index of efficiency, credibility and long term survival still excludes a number of patients because of their co-morbidities which do not allow them undergo an interventional procedure of this nature, with its possible complications. The term percutaneous valve implantation defines the development of a foldable heart valve that can be mounted on an expandable stent, delivered percutaneously via standard catheter-based techniques and implanted within a diseased valve annulus. In the case of non-imperative need for valve replacement, the valved stent is substituted by an intra luminary repair device that is put into action in situ. The advantages of minimally invasive techniques such as percutaneous valve replacement and repair are obvious, but, in spite of their impressive results, there are still a number of faults and deficiencies that limit their wide application in clinical practice. It is imperative that more clinical trials are carried out so as to make the new method sufficiently competitive with the surgical technique that is already well established. At the dawn of a new era for surgical treatment, a patient undergoing heart valve replacement and leaving the hospital only a few hours later no longer seems a science fiction scenario.
Authors and Affiliations
A. AKINOSOGLOU, E. APOSTOLOAKIS
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP96695
- DOI -
- Views 84
- Downloads 0
Model system development<br /> for correlation between histologic structure and mechanical behavior of the aorta
OBJECTIVE Τhe purpose of this study was the development of a model system for the investigation of the histological structure of the aortic wall when subjected to pre-selected levels of stress. METHOD Ten white male...
Diuretic-induced hyponatremia
No abstract available
Oral health and quality of life of dental patients in the General Hospital of Kalymnos <br /> <br />
OBJECTIVE The growing recognition that quality of life (QoL) is an important outcome of dental care has created a need for the development of specific instruments to measure oral health related quality of life. The oral...
Familial adenomatous polyposis. Recent developments in diagnosis and treatment
Familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) is a hereditary disease characterized by the presence from tens to thousands of colonic adenomatous polyps. Great phenotypic variability can be observed, regarding the numbers of ad...
The information seeking behavior and information needs of doctors working in a Greek military hospital
OBJECTIVE To study the information seeking behavior and information needs of military doctors. METHOD The sample consisted of 101 military doctors working in a Greek military hospital in Attica. Data were collected us...