Percutaneous pulmonary and tricuspid valve implantations: An update.

Abstract

The field of percutaneous valvular interventions is one of the most exciting and rapidly developing within interventional cardiology. Percutaneous procedures focusing on aortic and mitral valve replacement or interventional treatment as well as techniques of percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation have already reached worldwide clinical acceptance and routine interventional procedure status. Although techniques of percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation have been described just a decade ago, two stent-mounted complementary devices were successfully introduced and more than 3000 of these procedures have been performed worldwide. In contrast, percutaneous treatment of tricuspid valve dysfunction is still evolving on a much earlier level and has so far not reached routine interventional procedure status. Taking into account that an "interdisciplinary challenging", heterogeneous population of patients previously treated by corrective, semi-corrective or palliative surgical procedures is growing inexorably, there is a rapidly increasing need of treatment options besides redo-surgery. Therefore, the review intends to reflect on clinical expansion of percutaneous pulmonary and tricuspid valve procedures, to update on current devices, to discuss indications and patient selection criteria, to report on clinical results and finally to consider future directions.