Valve replacement is a cardiac surgery procedure in which a patient's cardiac valve is replaced by a different valve. The valve is replaced in case it is severely damaged.

Valve replacement is most often used to treat aortic valves and severely damaged mitral valves. It is also used to treat any valve disease that is life-threatening. Sometimes, more than one valve may be damaged in the heart, so patients may need more than one repair or replacement.

There are 2 kinds of valves used for valve replacement:

· Mechanical valves, which are usually made from materials such as plastic, carbon, or metal.

· Biological valves, which are made from animal tissue (called a xenograft) or taken from the human tissue of a donated heart (called an allograft or homograft).

Because the heart or the aorta must be opened for the procedure, heart valve surgery is an open heart surgery. The operation is performed under general anesthesia, meaning that patient will be asleep during the operation. The heart is stopped, and blood is sent through a heart-lung machine. The damaged valve is removed and the new valve stitched into place. When the replacement is completed, the surgeon restarts the heart, and the blood is allowed to go back through it again.

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