Advances and Trends in Tissue Engineering of Heart Valves

Improvements in health care and treatment of diseases have led to an increase in life expectancy in developed countries. However, this achievement has also inadvertently increased the prevalence of chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, adding to the growing burden of health care cost globally. Unfortunately, this trend is expected to escalate in the foreseeable future. Cardiovascular disease remains one of the main problems in contemporary health care worldwide, accounting for approximately one third of the world’s total death (Poole-Wilson, 2005). This article focuses on a subgroup of cardiovascular disease known as valvular heart disease whereby abnormalities or malfunctions of the heart valves are detected. It is estimated that 93,000 valvular surgeries were conducted in the United States in 2002 (American Stroke Association & American Heart Association, 2005) and valve replacement surgeries accounted for 75% of the surgery performed for valvular defects in Australia and, of that, 56% were for aortic valves (Davies & Senes, 2003).