Abstract
Tricuspid valve disease has been neglected for a long time by cardiologists and surgeons, but for some years now leakage of tricuspid valve has been demonstrated as a prognostic factor in the evolution of patients with left heart valve disease undergoing surgery. Several techniques for plastic repair of tricuspid valve have been developed and the published studies differ on the results of these techniques; we conducted this study to assess the results of plastic repair of tricuspid valve in a population of patients with a high prevalence of rheumatic disease and to compare Carpentier's ring annuloplasty techniques with DEVEGA plasty. We conducted a retrospective study of patients undergoing plastic repair of tricuspid valve in the Department of Cardiology at the Medicine University of Sfax over a period of 25 years. We compared the results from the Group 1 (Carpentier's ring annuloplasty) with Group 2 (DeVEGA plasty). 91 patients were included in our study, 45 patients in the Group 1 and 46 patients in the Group 2. Most patients had mean or severe TI (83%) before surgery, ring dilation was observed in 90% of patients with no significant difference between the two groups. Immediate results were comparable between the two techniques but during monitoring recurrent, at least mean, insufficiency was significantly more frequent in the DeVEGA plasty Group. The predictive factors for significant recurring long term TI were DeVEGA technique (OR=3.26[1.12-9.28]) in multivariate study and preoperative pulmonary artery systolic pressure (OR=1.06 (1.01-1.12)). Plastic repair of tricuspid valve using Carpentier's ring seems to guarantee better results than DeVEGA plasty. On the other hand, preoperative high PASP is predictive of recurrent leakage of tricuspid valve even after plasty; hence the importance of surgery in the treatment of patients at an early stage of the disease.