MedE Special Speaker

Abstract: Valvular heart disease is an increasingly common cause of cardiovascular disease in the United States and is equally impactful around the globe. This burden of disease leads to over 300,000 heart valve replacement surgeries each year worldwide. It is anticipated that the number of patients requiring valve replacement worldwide will triple by 2050, leading some to describe heart valve disease as "the next cardiac epidemic".

Heart valve engineering is a branch of biomedical engineering focused on the research and development of devices to replace or repair a diseased heart valve. When approaching heart valve replacement options, there are currently two main approaches to fabricate valves: purely biological and non-biological. The biological approach aims to replicate a native heart valve by combining living cells (valvular cells, stem cells, etc.) with a biocompatible scaffold (biopolymer, cell-produced extracellular matrix, synthetic polymer, etc.). Non-biological options are those without live cellular/tissue elements such as polymeric, bioprosthetic and mechanical valves. In this presentation, I will go over different aspects of the heart valve engineering and their translation into clinical medicine.