Mitral valve replacement

Abstract

This history of mitral valve surgery begins with the first successful operation by Cutler at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1923, which was developed further there after World War II by Harken et al. The first reliable mitral valve replacement device was developed in the late 1950s. In 1959, Nina Braunwald of the National Institutes of Health made the first successful implantable prosthetic valve, but the first universally applied mitral valve replacement device was a ball-and-cage valve developed by Albert Starr and Lowell Edwards. The Starr-Edwards mitral valve, first implanted in 1961, was the gold standard for many years, until the late 1960s, when second-and third-generation valves began to appear with different design features. The Starr-Edwards ball valve, which is still in use today, is an effective device for relieving the obstruction of the mitral orifice, but its usage has decreased because of the relatively high rate of thromboembolism that occurs despite anticoagulation.