This abstract, in three different parts, has presented a briefing on cardiac surgery focusing valve surgiries and valve substitutes successfully used in the 60's at first the mechanical prosthesis, followed by the heterologs afterwards the glutaraldehyde introduction in order to preserve biological tissues. The basic indications to operating on valve lesions consist in symptom relief in preservation of complications and in mortality. Also in the first part, there is description of the surgical indication publication aspects pointing out stenosis and insufficiency of mitral, aortic, tricuspid and pulmonary valves, active inffectious endocarditis and pre-operative procedure in addition to the characterization of different mechanical and biological cardiac valve bioprostheses that exist in the market and their most frequent complications. The surgical treatment in valvopathies, operative techniques to replace mitral, aortic tricuspid and pulmonary valves, anesthetic and post-operative procedure as well as reoperations were covered in the second part of the publication. The abstract was concluded considering particular situations such as surgical treatment in endocarditis in mitral, tricuspid and aortic valves whose tendency is greater than it is in mitral and the most common cause of acute aortic failure as well. The endocarditis development has a different physiopathology when compared to prostheses and native valves, with greater morbi-mortality than that observed in native valves. There are a few endocarditis increasing risk factors in native valves, black race, mechanical prostheses, male sex and long extracorporeal circulation time. The clinical-surgical interaction seems to influence decisively in order to obtain better results in this pathology. Finally our experience has been reported with biological prostheses in mitral and aortic positions in 11 and 10 years of follow-up, respectively. The survival index in mitral replacements was similar amongst youngsters and adults 74% mitral and 67% aortic. Late fatal bioprosthesis related complications in mitral position were rupture, endocarditis, paravalvular leakage, thromboembolism and especially calcification at a rate of 1.0 event % patient-year 95% of the patients free from those complications. In the aortic position, thrombombolism and especially endocarditis were ruled out, amounting to 1.6 events % patient-year (aortic), focusing endocarditis and calcification in mitral and endocarditis and vascular brain stroke in aortic, 55.2% (mitral) and 85.7% (aortic) of the patients free from those complications. Due to the high calcification occurrence, especially among youngsters who underwent bioprosthesis replacement in general, there was a study covering different ages, with bovine pericardium prostheses in mitral position. The results justified the use of this prosthesis even in young patients, as apposed to authors who recommended the use of this graft in patients up to 30 years. It was concluded that bovine pericardium prostheses, when strictly prepared, shows not only a good hemodynamic performance, bur also a late satisfactory evoluation. It is important to consider that a permanent gathering of the literature is fundamental for the community to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of every prosthesis type available.
heart valves; valvopathies; valvopathies; valvopathies; heart valves prostheses