Editorial comment Aortic valve repair: still a dream?

In this issue of the Journal, Haydar et al. [3] report on their experience with aortic valvuloplasty in an heterogeneous group of patients but constituted mainly by congenital cases. With the increasing success of mitral valvuloplasty, many surgeons have revived attempts to perform conservative procedures on the aortic valve. However, this valve, deceivingly with a simpler structure than the mitral valve, has, for the most part, eluded these efforts. In the past, many reports on aortic valvuloplasty for congenital, rheumatic and degenerative disease have described mixed results and the attitude of the surgical teams varied from a degree of cautious optimism to frank disillusionment. Although congenital aortic valve insufficiency, especially that which is associated with a ventricular septal defect, still remains a generally accepted indication for repair, mainly because of the unfavorable consequences of prosthetic valve replacement in the pediatric ages, repair of rheumatic and of senile, calcified, aortic valves had almost been aban