البدائل النسيجية الحيوية للدسام التاجي

Abstract EN

Lifelong-anticoagulation of patients with mechanical prosthetic valves, especially the mitral, is an impractical endeavor in developing countries.

Just as tissue valve substitutes, such as the pulmonary autograft, homograft and stentless heterografts, are starting to replace the classical mechanical prostheses in aortic valve surgery worldwide, a few tissue options are now becoming available for the mitral valve, which is the valve mostly affected in rheumatic heart disease.

This article reviews these options and presents our experience at Damascus University Cardiovascular Surgical Center with the mitral pulmonary autograft, which started in July 1997 with the help of the originator of the concept, Mr.

Donald Ross and which has been utilized in 59 Syrian patients so far.

Our experience with 59 patients to date-encourages us to continue using this mitral substitute in selected cases to avoid the hazards of anticoagulation in our patients, until a better tissue alternative is available.