Treatment strategies for coronary artery disease combined with valvular disease

  In terms of etiology, degenerative changes predominate in Western countries, especially in patients with aortic valve disease and mitral valve closure insufficiency. Rheumatic disease still accounts for a large proportion of patients with valvular disease in China. The actual survival rate of patients with valve disease is much lower than the theoretical survival rate, and the combination of coronary heart disease is one of the reasons for this.  Take aortic valve disease as an example, combined coronary artery disease combined with coronary artery disease. The complex pathophysiologic interactions between valve disease and coronary artery disease often exacerbate or mutually mask symptoms when patients with heart valve disease are combined with coronary artery disease. Even in some patients without significant symptoms, surgical management of coronary lesions is often required to reverse the combined pathophysiologic changes of these two diseases, maintain stable perioperative pathophysiology, and improve long-term postoperative outcomes.  Combined coronary artery disease not only leads to decreased natural survival in patients with valvular disease, but also significantly increases mortality from valvular surgery. In turn, comorbid valvular disease similarly increases natural mortality and mortality from bypass surgery in patients with coronary artery disease. According to a survey by the National Association of Thoracic Surgeons. Although the combination of coronary artery disease with valvular disease is not uncommon and significantly increases patient mortality and surgical risk, randomized controlled clinical trials comparing optimal revascularization treatment strategies for this particular patient are lacking and guidelines are less frequently addressed.  Whether PCI can be used for revascularization in patients with coronary artery disease combined with valvular disease is not addressed in any guidelines. In 2005, Byrne et al. proposed the concept of Hybrid Approach, which combines PCI with minimally invasive valve surgery. First, coronary artery disease is treated by internal PCI, and then minimally invasive valve surgery is performed within 1 week after PCI for patients who still need valve surgery. This technique has a significantly lower operative mortality rate than traditional bypass combined valve surgery because of its less invasive nature, and is particularly suitable for high-risk patients with heart valve disease combined with coronary artery disease, such as acute myocardial infarction or cardiogenic shock. However, the long-term efficacy of PCI in complex coronary artery disease and the limitations of minimally invasive valve surgery in some patients with valve disease have prevented the universal adoption of hybrid surgery.  Human understanding of disease is a continuous process, and with the development of modern science and technology, more and more diseases have gone from being untreatable to being treatable, and from invasive to minimally invasive or even noninvasive treatment. Recently, minimally invasive interventional therapy has become a useful supplement to surgical treatment of valve disease, and also provides a new option for hemodynamic reconstruction in patients with coronary artery disease combined with valve disease.  Percutaneous aortic valve insertion (TAVI) is an emerging cardiac interventional technique that has been developed recently and has been performed in more than 50,000 patients worldwide. The most commonly used routes for TAVI include the transfemoral approach and the transapical approach.  In the 1990s, Otavio Alfieri, an Italian surgeon, first used the surgical method of suturing the middle of the anterior mitral leaflet to the middle of the posterior leaflet to form a mitral valve with a double orifice during the repair of the mitral valve. This repair method gave us an insight into the possibility of percutaneously suturing or clamping the anterior and posterior leaflets of the mitral valve in the middle using some method, similar to surgery but much less invasive. In recent years, percutaneous mitral edge-to-edge valvuloplasty (MitraClip) has been widely used in clinical practice, and approximately 9,000 MitraClip procedures have been performed worldwide.  In conclusion, with the important advances in the treatment of heart valve disease in recent years, although many of the new techniques are still in the initial stages of application, there is no doubt that transcatheter valve therapy holds great promise and that more and more domestic patients will benefit from it. This technological advancement will provide more, safer, and minimally invasive options for hemodynamic reconstruction in patients with coronary artery disease combined with valvular disease.