A physiological approach to high-frequency testing of prosthetic ball valves.

Degeneration of polymeric heart valve poppets has caused complications in a number of patients. We decided to evaluate such poppets in a high-speed pulse duplicator with whole blood as the test fluid. Ten valves were placed in the duplicator, ten were placed in a static blood medium, and ten others were frozen for the entire period and were used as control poppets. We found that the poppets in the duplicator absorbed a greater quantity of lipids than did those in the static medium. Our results could not be correlated to data from valves implanted in man. However, the study has provided the groundwork for future investigations.