Heart valve repair is a cardiac surgery procedure, carried out to repair one or more faulty heart valves. In some valvular heart diseases repair where possible is preferable to valve replacement. A mechanical heart valve is a replacement valve that is not itself subject to repair.
Valvuloplasty is the widening of a stenotic valve using a balloon catheter. Types include:[citation needed]
Commissurotomy of heart valves is called a valvulotomy.
Mitral valve repair is mainly used to treat stenosis (narrowing) or regurgitation (leakage) of the mitral valve.[citation needed]
Aortic valve repair is a surgical procedure used to correct some aortic valve disorders as an alternative to aortic valve replacement.[1] Aortic valve repair is performed less often and is more technically difficult than mitral valve repair. There are two surgical techniques of aortic-valve repair:
Tricuspid valve repair is used to correct tricuspid regurgitation.[2]
The first two percutaneous ultrasound-guided fetal balloon valvuloplasties, a type of in utero surgery for severe aortic valve obstruction, were reported in 1991.[3]