ABSTRACT
The prosthetic heart valve has played a large role in clinical cardiology over the past 30 years. In many instances prosthetic heart valve replacement represents the last stage of the natural history for cardiac valvular heart disease, and has dramatically improved the lives of many patients. Unfortunately, prosthetic valves are far from perfect, have a limited lifespan and may introduce a different set of problems for the cardiac patient, i.e. substituting one disease process for another.
