Subvalvular Circular Annuloplasty as a Component of Aortic Valve Repair
Hiroshi Izumoto MD, Kohei Kawazoe MD, Tetsunori Kawase MD, Hajime Kim MD

A new technique of aortic annuloplasty is described, together with immediate postoperative outcome in consecutive 26 patients. The mean cardiopulmonary bypass time was 139 min, and mean aortic cross-clamp time 106 min. The mean postoperative aortic regurgitation (AR) grade was 0.9 ± 0.7, which was an improvement over the preoperative AR grade (p <0.0001). Postoperatively, LVEDD was reduced from 6.3 ± 0.9 cm to 5.1 ± 1.1 cm (p <0.001), and annulus size from 2.6 ± 0.3 cm to 2.2 ± 0.2 cm (p <0.0001). The short-term postoperative outcome with this technique was satisfactory. It is believed that this new method will play an important role as a component of aortic valve repair.