The Ross procedure is a cardiac surgery

Cardiac surgery

Cardiovascular surgery is surgery on the heart or great vessels performed by cardiac surgeons. Frequently, it is done to treat complications of ischemic heart disease , correct congenital heart disease, or treat valvular heart disease from various causes including endocarditis, rheumatic heart...

 operation where a diseased aortic valve

Aortic valve

The aortic valve is one of the valves of the heart. It is normally tricuspid , although in 1% of the population it is found to be congenitally bicuspid . It lies between the left ventricle and the aorta....

 is replaced with the person's own pulmonary valve

Pulmonary valve

The pulmonary valve is the semilunar valve of the heart that lies between the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery and has three cusps. Similar to the aortic valve, the pulmonary valve opens in ventricular systole, when the pressure in the right ventricle rises above the pressure in the...

. A pulmonary allograft (valve taken from a cadaver

Cadaver

A cadaver is a dead human body.Cadaver may also refer to:* Cadaver tomb, tomb featuring an effigy in the form of a decomposing body* Cadaver , a video game* cadaver A command-line WebDAV client for Unix....

) is then used to replace the patient's own pulmonary valve. Pulmonary autograft replacement of the aortic valve is the operation of choice in infants and children, but its use in adults remains controversial.

History

The Ross procedure is named after Dr. Donald Ross - a pioneer in cardiac surgery in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 - who proposed the procedure in 1962 and first performed it in 1967.

Advantages

• Freedom from thromboembolism without the need for anticoagulation.
• The valve grows as the patient grows (i.e. children).
• Favourable hemodynamics
  Hemodynamics
  Hemodynamics, meaning literally "blood movement" is the study of blood flow or the circulation.All animal cells require oxygen for the conversion of carbohydrates, fats and proteins into carbon dioxide , water and energy in a process known as aerobic respiration...
  
  .
• No foreign material present in the valve.

Disadvantages

• Single valve disease (aortic) treated with a two valve procedure (aortic and pulmonary).

Pulmonary valve replacement

One of the main objections to the Ross procedure is the genesis of pulmonary valve disease in addition to aortic valve disease. Proponents have argued that biological valves implanted in the pulmonary position would be slow to develop dysfunction, and any dysfunction would be well tolerated due to the lower pressures in the right side of the heart. Survival of homografts in the pulmonary position is good (20-year freedom from reoperation of 80%), and homograft dysfunction is infrequently implicated in the observed morbidity and mortality.

Homografts (aortic or pulmonary) should be the replacement of choice; no other valve performed as well in the pulmonary position. Many homograft valves are sterilized with ethylene oxide

Ethylene oxide

Ethylene oxide, also called oxirane, is the organic compound with the formula . It is a cyclic ether. This means that it is composed of two alkyl groups attached to an oxygen atom in a cyclic shape . This colorless flammable gas with a faintly sweet odor is the simplest epoxide, a three-membered...

 or irradiation

Irradiation

Irradiation is the process by which an object is exposed to radiation. The exposure can originate from various sources, including natural sources. Most frequently the term refers to ionizing radiation, and to a level of radiation that will serve a specific purpose, rather than radiation exposure to...

-- methods recognized to have deleterious effects on valve performance. The results of the pulmonary autograft procedure are likely to be superior with the use of fresh homograft valves. Today, cryopreservation is the method of choice for homograft preservation.

External links

• Cardiac Surgery in the Adult - Pulmonary autograft
• "Ross Me, Baby!" - A First Person Account of a Ross Procedure Performed on a Adult Male, with Photographs Showing Pre-op, Surgery, Post-op, and Recovery
• ps4ross.com - a site dedicated to the procedure and Dr. Paul Stelzer, an expert in the Ross Procedure