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(Circulation. 2005;111:2712-2714.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial

Tissue Engineering of Heart Valves

Decellularized Valve Scaffolds

Richard A. Hopkins, MD

From the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Brown University, and the Collis Cardiac Surgical Research Laboratory, Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, RI.

Correspondence to Richard A. Hopkins, MD, Karlson Professor and Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Brown School of Medicine and Rhode Island Hospital, 2 Dudley St, MOC Suite 500, Providence, RI 02905. E-mail rahopkins@lifespan.org

Key Words: Editorials • valves • prosthesis • transplantation • clinical trials

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

In 1956, Gordon Murray first reported the human clinical surgical use of fresh aortic valve homografts (cadaveric) transplanted into the descending thoracic aorta for clinical amelioration of the consequences of native aortic valve insufficiency.¹ His initial operation preceded by 5 years the availability of mechanical aortic valve prostheses. Although the operation was only partly successful hemodynamically, these "homograft valves" had remarkable durability and performance. Some patients had no calcification or transvalvular gradients for up to 20 years, whereas others ultimately failed as a consequence of progressive fibrosis and calcification.^2,3 In 1962, the initial use of aortic valve homografts in the orthotopic position were reported independently by Sir Donald Ross of England and Sir Brian Barrett-Boyes of New Zealand.^4–6 As manufactured prosthetic valves gradually evolved in design and range of choices, homograft use began to decline because of issues of acquisitional logistics, banking, transport, sizing, infectious disease transmission, and others. With the development of organized organ and tissue donation for transplantation in the 1980s and 1990s, cardiovascular allograft tissues became increasingly available primarily as cryopreserved valves with variably retained native cell viability. Importantly, the terrific surgical and specific performance advantages of allograft semilunar cardiac valves have been recognized by reconstructive surgeons worldwide.⁷ These valve "transplants" have by and large crossed histocompatibility and ABO constraints, however. Although they perform well in the short- to mid-term, they have been associated with ultimate fibrosis and failure in a significant proportion of cases, especially in patients for whom the desirability of a living transplant would . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Tissue Engineering of Heart Valves: Decellularized Porcine and Human Valve Scaffolds Differ Importantly in Residual Potential to Attract Monocytic Cells

Erwin Rieder, Gernot Seebacher, Marie-Theres Kasimir, Eva Eichmair, Birgitta Winter, Barbara Dekan, Ernst Wolner, Paul Simon, and Guenter Weigel
Circulation 2005 111: 2792-2797. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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