Mitral Valve Replacement; Day #1

It's 11:40 pm and we're just finishing up for the day.  It's too late for any long stories about the day, so I decided to pick out my favorite shots (out of the couple hundred I took today). 

Our second patient today was a mitral valve replacement on a farmer who had Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD), which is very prevelant in Africa.  The disease destroys their valves and a big part of the adult cases we do here are associated with RHD.

The top picture is this patient's mitral valve when we removed it this afternoon.  For those of you who aren't sure what a mitral valve is supposed to look like, rest assured, it isn't supposed to look like this.  It was calcified and as hard as bone.  The leaflets of the valve are supposed to be thin and move freely to allow blood to move from one chamber of the heart into another.

The second photo is of the prosthetic valve that we implanted into him. It is an animal valve with a support ring around it to give the surgeon something to put his stiches through.


The picture at the bottom is the prosthetic valve with the sutures through it just before the surgeon pushes it down into the patient's heart and ties each of the stiches down to secure it.