Abstract
The clinical results of DVR (double artificial valve replacement) with Björk-Shiley valves for severe combined valvular disease (mean pre-operative EF (ejection-fraction) was 0.36) were unsatisfactory. One of the causes of that matter could be thought that the leakage of Björk-Shiley valves was not so little and this gave an overload to the cardiac muscle especially for the patient with serious diseased heart. However, Björk-Shiley valves had the advantage of the small resistance, on the other hand, Starr-Edwards Ball valves had a little leakage, but large resistance.
Therefore, with the mechanical simulator to the cardiovascular system, hemodynamics under the possible four combinations of the two kinds of valves were compared one after the other. It was found that, among the four, the combination of aortic-Ball and mitral-Björk had the best hemodynamics.
To 4 cases of serious combined valvular diseases (preoperative EF=0.28), this combination of DVR was applied and fortunately every case showed expected results.
