HAART 200 Aortic Valve Annuloplasty Trial

Aortic valve disease is the most common valvular heart disease with approximately 200,000 patients per year undergoing conventional aortic valve replacement in North America and Europe. Around 60% of valves have Aortic Stenosis (AS) and 40% of have Aortic Insufficiency, which is the failure of the aortic valve to close completely during diastole, causing blood to flow from the aorta back into the left ventricle. Bicuspid valve morphology is present in a fourth to a third of patients coming to surgical intervention, and constitutes a very important subset. Several conditions are associated with bicuspid disease, including ascending aortic or root aneurysms in up to a third. Traditional management of aortic valve and root disease has been with aortic valve replacement, with or without root replacement (Bentall Procedure). However, as has been observed in patients with mitral valve repair, the option of maintaining one's reconstructed native valve versus a replacement, either bioprosthetic or mechanical, can have multiple benefits. The advantages of repair include: the avoidance of prosthetic valve related complications and structural degeneration with bioprosthetic valves over 10-15 years and elimination of the need for anticoagulation and related problems with mechanical valves in younger patients. The significantly lower rate of endocarditis after repair is a major impetus to increasing performance of BAV reconstruction. Thus, aortic valve repair currently is established as an excellent option for patients with BAV. However, with connective tissue disorders being an inherent feature of BAV, outcomes have been less stable long-term than for trileaflet repair, primarily because of late annular redilatation in BAV disease. Therefore, this study is designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of annular stabilization with a bicuspid annuloplasty ring in patients undergoing repair of a bicuspid aortic valve for predominant aortic insufficiency.