[Prevention of prosthetic heart valve infection]

Fourty patients with primary and secondary infective endocarditis of the native heart valves as well as patients with rheumatic heart diseases not complicated by infective endocarditis were operated upon in the clinic from 1996 till 1998. The prosthetic heart valves in which the tissue cuff was sutures by blanket suture along the perimeter with a silver thread were implanted to 25 patients. In the other 15 patients (a control group) prosthetics were made using unchanged construction of the prosthesis (without the silver thread). Patients with valve prostheses sutured with the silver thread had smooth postoperative period. They had no prosthetic endocarditis either at the early or at late postoperative periods. In 3 patients of the control group infective endocarditis of the valve prosthesis developed at different periods after operation. All of them were reoperated. The authors consider that defense of the tissue cuff of the prosthetic valve with the silver thread allows risk of the development of prosthetic endocarditis to be substantially reduced. In the cases described it was completely avoided.