ABSTRACT
Theodore Tuffier is recognized to have performed the first aortic valve repair in a patient with aortic stenosis in 1913. The operation involved digital invagination of the anterior ascending aorta wall and “tearing” of the stenotic valve. Prior to the popularization of Gibbon’s and Lillehei’s methods for extracorporeal circulation in the mid 1950s, efforts to correct aortic regurgitation surgically were limited to closed correction. As aortic regurgitation was not very amenable to these approaches, refinements in cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) and myocardial protection enabled the development of open valvular procedures. Since then, a variety of reports have been published on repair of aortic insufficiency (AI) by suturing two adjacent cusps together to correct prolapse or by excising the non-coronary cusp and its aortic sinus and narrowing the aortic root and proximal ascending aorta, thereby converting the aortic valve into a bicuspid valve.
