Combined mitral and aortic valve replacement with the BJORK-Shiley tilting-disc valve prosthesis was performed in 42 patients. Hospital and late mortality rates were both at the 9.5% level. No correlation was seen between mortality and combination of concomitant valve lesions. Morbidity was elevated. No episodes of embolism were observed after surgery, although one patient died of severe haemorrhage. Only one patient showed valvular dysfunction (grade 2/4 leakage), but did not require reoperation. Postoperatively, 75.7% of the patients were asymptomatic for a mean follow-up period of 21.1 months. The Björk-Shiley prosthesis offers a small gradient associated with a low profile, which constitute important advantages in multiple valve replacement.
Between 1971 and 1974, 26 valve replacements with the Björk-Shiley tilting disc valve prosthesis were performed in 23 children between 4 and 16 years of age. Mitral valve replacement was carried out in 11 patients, aortic valve replacement in 9 and double replacement in the other 3 patients. Several of the patients presented associated lesions which were also corrected at the same intervention, One patient died during the postoperative period; the remaining 22 all showed significant clinical remission. No incidents of thromboembolism or complications of any other nature were observed during follow-up periods of 6 to 26 months. It is our belief that the Björk-Shiley valve represents an improvement over other prostheses currently used for the surgical correction of valve disease in children.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.