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Heart 2000;83:376-380 ( April )

Review

The aortic root: structure, function, and surgical reconstruction

M J Underwood, G El Khoury, D Deronck, D Glineur, R Dion

Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc, Brussels, Belgium

Correspondence to: Mr M J Underwood, Department of Cardiac Surgery, Bristol Royal Infirmary, Bristol, BS2 8HW, UK

Accepted 17 September 1999

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

	Introduction

Aortic valve insufficiency may be caused by abnormalities of the leaflets, the root, or a combination of both. In some patients, the primary pathology is confined to the aortic root itself, the leaflets remaining anatomically normal. These patients have progressive dilatation of the aortic sinuses and, on occasion, dilatation and distortion of the annulus which results in valvar incompetence.¹ Most cases are "idiopathic" (annuloaortic ectasia) but it may be associated with a wide spectrum of pathological conditions which include the Marfan syndrome,² aortic dissection and aortitis,^3 4 along with rare systemic disorders such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.⁵

Aortic root pathology has now been reported as the most common cause of aortic valve incompetence in the United States, an observation which probably reflects the decline of rheumatic valve disease.¹ Current conventional treatment for patients with significant aortic incompetence caused by a dilated, aneurysmal aortic root is replacement of the ascending aorta using a . . . [Full text of this article]

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