Heart Care Info - Heart Disease Prevention & Treatment

Aortic valve repair for active infective endocarditis

TE David - European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, 2012 - Aortic valve replacement is the standard treatment when surgery is needed for active infective endocarditis of the aortic valve. Although there have been a few isolated case reports on aortic valve repair for the treatment of active infective endocarditis [12], the largest series ever ...

Aortic valve replacement is the standard treatment when surgery is needed for active infective endocarditis of the aortic valve. Although there have been a few isolated case reports on aortic valve repair for the treatment of active infective endocarditis [1–2], the largest series ever published is in this issue of the Journal [3]. Mayer et al. [3] have an article titled ‘Repair versus replacement of the aortic valve in active infective endocarditis’ where the authors compared the outcomes of aortic valve repair in 33 patients with those of aortic valve replacement in 67 patients. The title suggests that aortic valve repair is an alternative to valve replacement to treat active endocarditis when in reality it is not; it is only possible in selected patients as the authors defined in their manuscript and the reader may redefine based on the results. Be as it may, the fact that they repaired the aortic valve in 33% of the cases with active infective endocartitis, including one in four with aortic root abscess, is a formidable task, and I congratulate them for trying to expand the indications of aortic valve repair to this very sick group of patients. This would ...