Aortic Valve Disease

Surgery

If valve damage becomes more severe and medications do not control the symptoms, surgery to repair or replace the valve becomes necessary.

Aortic valves are usually replaced rather than repaired. However, because of advances in technology, equipment and surgical techniques, some aortic valves, especially ones with normal or near normal leaflets, can be repaired. Heart surgeons agree that whenever possible a heart valve should be repaired instead of replaced. Heart valve repair leaves patients with their own normally functioning tissue, which is resistant to infection and does not require blood-thinning medication.

A damaged aortic valve that cannot be repaired can be surgically replaced in three ways:

• aortic valve replacement with a mechanical valve or tissue bioprosthesis.
• aortic valve replacement with a preserved human valve.
• the Ross procedure, a surgery in which the aortic valve is removed and replaced by a patient's pulmonary valve. (The pulmonary valve is then replaced with a preserved human pulmonary valve.)

See more information about heart valve surgery at Mayo Clinic.