THE PERICARDIAL VALVE IN THE AORTIC POSITION TEN YEARS LATER

To assess the behavior of the pericardial valve at 10 years after implantation, the cases of 240 patients who had undergone aortic valve replacement with the standard Ionescu-Shiley (Shiley, Inc., Irvine, Calif.) bovine pericardial valve between February 1977 and December 1983 were reassessed. Follow-up of the 224 hospital survivors was 99.6% complete. Fifty-seven valve-related events occured. Fourteen were thrombotic events (12% patient-year), 28 were intrinsic tissue failures (2.4% patient-year), 13 were cases of prosthetic valve endocarditis (1.1% patient-year), and 2 were paravalvular leaks (0.17%/patient-year)