Sinus of Valsalva aneurysm in Africa: a literature review

Abstract

Sinus of Valsalva aneurysm (SOVA) is a rare congenital anomaly. The incidence of SOVA is five times higher among Asians than among Western populations. Currently, there is a lack of information on the clinical presentations of this entity in Africans. This study aims to perform a comprehensive review of papers concerning SOVA in the African population. In this study, papers published from 1962 to April 2021 were collected by entering the keywords, “SOVA” and “The name of each African country”, in the PubMed database, and a manual search was performed using citations from primary papers to retrieve any other reports not included in PubMed. As shown, 23 patients with SOVA were included in this review. There were 14 males (60.8%) and 9 females (39.1%), and their average age was 28.7 ± 13.9 years old. Their most frequent clinical presentation was dyspnea followed by palpitations. SOVA arose from the right sinus of Valsalva in 65.2% of cases, the dissection into interventricular septum (IVS) was the most frequent complication, accounting for 52.2% of cases, and the main cardiac anomalies associated with SOVA were other congenital cardiac aneurysms. In conclusion, in Africans, SOVA arises more often from the right sinus of Valsalva, the main complication of SOVA is their dissection into IVS, and the main cardiac anomalies associated with SOVA in the African population are other congenital cardiac aneurysms. These differences are important in the surgical planning of African patients.