Literature review 2018 on heart valve surgery

As in last year, an overview of interesting and relevant literature in the field of valve surgery published in 2018 is presented. Treatment decisions in the presence of relevant aortic valve diseases are influenced by recommendations from individual decisions by the heart team. There is growing evidence for transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) with a lower risk but long-term results are still lacking. This article only addresses TAVI publications that are of direct relevance for classical surgical procedures, which are otherwise mainly elucidated here. The publications in the field of atrioventricular valves provided new knowledge on the prevalence of mitral and tricuspid valve regurgitation and therefore underline renewed support for the statement that mitral valve reconstruction for structural mitral valve regurgitation can increase life expectancy. In functional mitral valve regurgitation, particularly the MITRA FR and COAPT studies in association with the MitraClip have aroused great attention. In addition, more support for aggressive treatment of isolated tricuspid valve regurgitation has appeared. These aspects are elucidated in this article although reviews such as this are never complete or free from personal bias and can never consider all potentially relevant articles. Given this caveat the authors hope the information will be useful and interesting.