Aortic valve replacement with sutureless and rapid deployment aortic valve prostheses

Aortic valve stenosis is the most common valve disease in the western world. Over the past few years the number of aortic valve re-placement (AVR) interventions has increased with outcomes that have been improved despite increasing age of patients and increasing burden of comorbidities. However, despite such excellent results and its well-established position, conventional AVR has undergone great development over the previous two decades. Such progress, by way of less invasive incisions and use of new technologies, including transcatheter aortic valve implantation and sutureless valve prostheses, is intended to reduce the traumatic impact of the surgical procedure, thus fulfilling lower risk patients’ expectations on the one hand, and extending the operability toward increasingly high-risk patients on the other. Sutureless and rapid deployment aortic valves are biological, pericardial prostheses that anchor within the aortic annulus with no more than three sutures. The sutureless prostheses, by avoiding the passage and the tying of the sutures, significantly reduce operative times and may improve outcomes. However, there is still a paucity of robust, evidence-based data on the role and performance of sutureless AVR. Therefore, strongest long-term data, randomized studies and registry data are required to adequately assess the durability and long-term outcomes of sutureless aortic valve replacement.