[Surgical treatment of rheumatic tricuspid valve disease]

The rheumatic tricuspid valve is relatively rare in this country. We report the study on surgical treatment of 27 patients with rheumatic tricuspid valve. Surgical procedure on 7 cases out of them was tricuspid valve replacement (TVR) with bioprosthesis and tricuspid valvuloplasty (TVP) was performed in the remaining 20 cases. There were two operative deaths in TVR group, however, there were no major complications, such as thrombosed valve, the valve dysfunction or prosthetic valve endocarditis in the remaining five cases after the operation. The method of TVP in twenty cases consisted of two Kay's TAPs, six tricuspid commissurotomies (OTC), ten OTC with Key's TAPs and two OTC with DeVega's TAPs. Doppler cardiography (DCG) revealed residual tricuspid regurgitation (TR) more than 3/4 degrees in 7 cases of TVP group immediately after operation. Moreover, the increment of residual TR was seen in 7 cases during the following period and TVR was performed in 3 cases out of these 7 cases. In conclusion, it is suggested that TVR may be preferred to TVP for the rheumatic tricuspid valve because of severe residual TR in many cases of TVP group.