Complications of cardiac valve surgery and their autopsy investigation

This review describes the broad spectrum of complications that may attend cardiac valve replacement surgery. Patient morbidity and mortality may be a consequence of preoperative condition or care, operative complications, or postoperative course. Careful autopsy examination of patient deaths, correlated with clinical information, will usually reveal an explanation for a patient's demise, as well as precipitating or contributing factors. The autopsy is particularly valuable if it can demonstrate technical, prosthetic, or other unexpected findings whose communication to clinicians and manufacturers can serve to improve the care of subsequent patients, or the development of improved prostheses.