Why the study?
Current heart valve implants cannot accommodate recipient somatic growth in pediatric patients with unrepairable congenital valvular disease, creating an urgent need for growing valve implants.
Tissue-engineered heart valves and partial heart transplantation are being investigated as potential solutions to the urgent need for growing heart valve implants in pediatric patients.
Growing valves needed for children with unrepairable disease; leaves open clinical translation of tissue-engineered or partial-transplant approaches.
The current standard of care for pediatric patients with unrepairable congenital valvular disease is a heart valve implant. However, current heart valve implants are unable to accommodate the somatic growth of the recipient, preventing long-term clinical success in these patients. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a growing heart valve implant for children. This article reviews recent studies investigating tissue-engineered heart valves and partial heart transplantation as potential growing heart valve implants in large animal and clinical translational research. In vitro and in situ designs of tissue engineered heart valves are discussed, as well as the barriers to clinical translation.
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Konsek et al. (2023) studied this question.
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