What are the disadvantages of the Ross Procedure?
No matter how much improvement has been made in the surgical techniques for performing the pulmonary autotransplant procedure, there are still some drawbacks. One disadvantage is the magnitude of the surgical procedure. It is a very technicaly demanding surgery. Some critics are concerned that transferring of the pulmonary valve converts a patient with only aortic valve problems to a patient with 2 heart valves now in jeopardy. The potential for premature degeneration of the pulmonary substitute has also been voiced. Fortunately, the long term results now available tend to refute both of these concerns. Results have shown that premature failure of the homograft valve used to replace the pulmonary valve is much more common when human aortic tissue was used in the right side reconstruction, as opposed to human pulmonary tissue. There was only a 74% freedom from reoperation at 5 years when aortic homografts were used for the right ventricular reconstruction. However, there is a 94% freedo
