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The Ross Operation - An Evolutionary Tale

United Kingdom

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The Ross operation has many unique and intricate features, which need to be defined and understood if the operation is to achieve its potential. Although the operation was described nearly 35 years ago, it has continued to evolve through gradual understanding of the complex but elegant anatomic and physiological processes involved in execution of the operation as well as adaptation of the pulmonary valve to its new environment, coupled with the application of sophisticated methods of analysing the results of the operation. All of this has resulted in the accumulation of a large amount of knowledge, which strongly suggests that this operation could have an important, unique and wider role to play in the field of valve surgery provided that certain details are adhered to. Some of this knowledge is reviewed in this editorial.

Detailed studies of the form and function of the normal aortic valve have shown that this valve performs extremely sophisticated functions which depend largely on the biological properties of the valve at cellular and molecular level^1–4 and . . . [Full Text of this Article]