By IANS,
Washington : A less-used surgical procedure that bypasses a constricted aortic valve, rather than replacing it, restores blood flow from the heart to the rest of the body, giving highly risky patients a safe alternative to conventional valve surgery.
The study by Maryland University Medical Centre researchers (Baltimore), concluded that the procedure called aortic valve bypass, is an important option for high-risk elderly patients with a narrowed aortic valve, a condition called aortic stenosis.
The minimally invasive bypass procedure does not require the heart to be stopped. Many patients in the study had previously been considered too frail to benefit from surgery.
Aortic valve controls the blood flow from the heart’s main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, to the aorta, the artery that supplies blood to the rest of the body.
In aortic stenosis, calcium deposits narrow the valve and impair the heart’s ability to pump blood. It is most common heart valve disease afflciting the elderly in US, more than 50,000 of whom require surgery each year, reports Eurekalert.
“Because of the possible risks associated with aortic valve replacement in the elderly, almost 60 percent of patients with symptoms related to aortic stenosis are never referred to surgery,” says the study’s principal investigator, James S. Gammie, associate professor of surgery at the Maryland School.
Survival for these patients without surgery is poor; only 20 percent are alive three years after diagnosis. “But our research and five years of experience with the bypass procedure suggests there is a group of patients, typically considered inoperable because they are at the upper level of the risk spectrum, who could benefit from aortic valve bypass,” said Gammie.
The study will appear in the September 30 issue of Circulation and is now online.