Science / Medicine : Heart Valve Surgery

Surgery is still the best way to repair damaged aortic heart valves in all but the oldest and sickest patients, a report concludes. The study found that balloon angioplasty, a procedure using balloons to open narrowed valves, is less effective because the problem returns within a year in about half the patients treated this way.

However, experts say the balloon still appears a promising therapy for damage to the heart’s mitral valve. The aortic valve allows blood to flow into the aorta, the body’s main artery. Damage to this valve is most common in the elderly. The mitral valve controls the flow of blood into the left ventricle, which is the heart’s main pumping chamber and may be damaged in victims of rheumatic heart disease.

The latest study was performed entirely on elderly victims of aortic stenosis, or narrowing. It was conducted by Dr. Robert D. Safian and colleagues at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.