Aortic valve repair using aortic wall as leaflet patch material in children

Freedom from AoV reoperation or recurrent AR in children undergoing AVr with patch material.

Figure 1. Echocardiographic aortic regurgitation (AR) (A) and aortic stenosis (AS) (B) at preoperative, discharge, and follow-up timepoints in children undergoing aortic valve repair using aortic wall (AW) or autologous pericardium (AP) as leaflet patch material. AR and AS were graded on a 4-level scale: 1, none/trivial; 2, mild; 3, moderate; 4, severe. Mild-to-moderate and moderate-to-severe AR were upgraded to moderate and severe, respectively. Darker shades of blue (AR) and green (AS) indicate increasing grade. Degrees of AR/AS were similar between the AW and AP groups at all timepoints except discharge, at which the AW group had a similar rate of >mild AR (19% vs 6%; P = .34) but a >30% lower rate of >trivial AR (25% vs 59% for AP; P = .08).

Figure 2. Outcomes at 8 months postoperatively in children undergoing aortic valve (AoV) repair using aortic wall (AW) or autologous pericardium (AP) as leaflet patch material. A, Freedom from AoV reoperation was 84.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 58.7-94.6%) in the AW group versus 79.0% (95% CI, 53.2-91.5%) in the AP group (P = .61). B, Freedom from recurrent >mild aortic regurgitation (AR) was 82.8% (95% CI, 55.4-94.2%) in the AW group versus 78.6% (95% CI, 52.5-91.4%) in the AP group (P = .45). C, Freedom from the composite of AoV reoperation and recurrent AR was 68.4% (95% CI, 42.8-84.4%) in the AW group versus 73.7% (95% CI, 47.9-88.1%) in the AP group (P = .61).