Surgical aortic valve replacement
A severely narrowed aortic valve (known as aortic valve stenosis) must be surgically replaced because this condition cannot be treated with medication. Other heart valve defects can also make it necessary to replace the aortic valve. Various prostheses are available for this purpose: biological prostheses, plastic valve prostheses or catheter valve prostheses (TAVI).
On this page, we present surgical aortic valve replacement with biological or mechanical valve prostheses in detail.
Surgical aortic valve replacement
Surgical aortic valve replacement can be performed either via a complete sternal opening or minimally invasively via a partial sternal opening or a lateral approach to the anterior right chest. The heart-lung machine is used for this method. The diseased heart valve and calcifications are carefully removed and a heart valve prosthesis is then sutured into place.
The Structural Heart Interventions Programme (SHIP)
Every year, more than 1,500 interventional heart valve procedures are performed at the Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité (DHZC). This makes the DHZC a world leader in this field.
Our cardiac surgery and cardiology teams have been working closely together for years in the treatment of heart valve patients. This collaboration will be further expanded and consolidated in the new unit for catheter-based heart valve interventions: The so-called ‘Structural Heart Interventions Programme (SHIP)’ combines the previous cross-hospital units for catheter-based heart valve interventions, i.e. the Transcatheter Valve Unit (TVU) and the Cardiovascular Core Unit (CVCU).
In the ‘Structural Heart Interventions Programme (SHIP)’ unit, we bundle the medical planning and implementation of all catheter-based heart valve treatments in adults. The treatments carried out for heart valve diseases primarily include TAVI procedures to replace the aortic valve, but also catheter-based treatments for diseases of the mitral and tricuspid valves.
All information on the services and the interdisciplinary team of the ‘Structural Heart Interventions Programme (SHIP)’ can be found here.
