Technique of surgical aortic valve implantation using single interrupted annular sutures.

The introduction of the first surgical prosthetic heart valves in the early 1960s made effective treatment of aortic valve disease possible. The goal of surgical aortic valve replacement is to replace the diseased aortic valve with a properly functioning, sufficiently large prosthesis while avoiding intraoperative complications such as conduction disturbances, coronary artery occlusion, or paravalvular leaks. Although most commonly, non-everting pledgeted mattress sutures are used to implant the prosthesis during surgical aortic valve replacement , interrupted single sutures without pledgets can be a useful alternative, especially in patients with a small tissue annulus, because they theoretically maximize the orifice available for flow. This tutorial discusses the surgical technique of surgical aortic valve replacement using interrupted single annular sutures.