The design characteristics of heart valves

Abstract

The status of cardiac valve replacement still remains an ambivalent one. On the one hand are surgeons prompted possibly by earlier bitter experience who now advocate mechanical prosthetic valve replacement. They uphold essentially the ball-valve principle or its simple variants and urge that valve research be directed to solving such problems as tissue ingrowth on artificial fabrics to avoid embolie phenomena or to developing materials or coatings which will resist wear and corrosion in the blood stream. They are not principally concerned with modification of the basic design principles of their valve.