Cardiac engineered valves : state of the art

Engineered heart valves promise to be the ideal heart valve replacement: they have the potential to grow and repair within the host, to minimize inflammatory and immunological responses and to limit thromboembolism. In particular, pediatric patients with congenital defects would greatly benefit from growing replacement materials by reducing the need for surgical reinterventions due to the lack of prosthetic material growth. In fact, viable cells included in engineered heart valves can theoretically adapt to a growing and changing environment exactly as a native biological structure. Engineered heart valves represent thus a novel experimental approach to create autologous, living replacements with the potential to grow, regenerate, and remodel. The aim of this paper is to present a review concerning the research efforts to create a viable engineered heart valve.