An artificial heart valve is a device implanted in the heart of a patient with heart valvular disease. When one of the four heart valves malfunctions, the medical choice may be to replace the natural valve with an artificial valve. This requires open-heart surgery.
Valves are integral to the normal physiological functioning of the human heart. Natural heart valves are evolved to forms that perform the functional requirement of inducing unidirectional blood flow through the valve structure from one chamber of the heart to another. Natural heart valves become dysfunctional for a variety of pathological causes. Some pathologies may require complete surgical replacement of the natural heart valve with a heart valve prosthesis.
Read more about Artificial Heart Valve: Types of Heart Valve Prostheses, Mechanical Valves, Tissue (biological) Valves, Functional Requirements of Heart Valve Prostheses, Design Challenges of Heart Valve Prostheses, Typical Configuration of A Heart Valve Prosthesis
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