Heart valve repair

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Heart valve repair is a cardiac surgery procedure, carried out to repair one or more faulty heart valves. In some valvular heart diseases repair where possible is preferable to valve replacement. A mechanical heart valve is a replacement valve that is not itself subject to repair.

Valvuloplasty is the widening of a stenotic valve using a balloon catheter. Types include:^{[citation needed]}

• Aortic valvuloplasty in repair of a stenotic aortic valve
• Mitral valvuloplasty in the correction of an uncomplicated mitral

Commissurotomy of heart valves is called a valvulotomy.

Mitral valve repair is mainly used to treat stenosis (narrowing) or regurgitation (leakage) of the mitral valve.^{[citation needed]}

Aortic valve repair is a surgical procedure used to correct some aortic valve disorders as an alternative to aortic valve replacement.^[1] Aortic valve repair is performed less often and is more technically difficult than mitral valve repair. There are two surgical techniques of aortic-valve repair:

• The Reimplantation-Technique (David-Procedure)
• The Remodeling-Technique (Yacoub-Procedure)

Tricuspid valve repair is used to correct tricuspid regurgitation.^[2]

The first two percutaneous ultrasound-guided fetal balloon valvuloplasties, a type of in utero surgery for severe aortic valve obstruction, were reported in 1991.^[3]

• Cardiac surgery
• Bentall procedure
• Open aortic surgery