Epidemiological aspects of the aortic valve pathology

The dynamics of the structure of aortic valve pathology over the thirty-year (1991–2020) period of operation of the cardiac surgery hospital of the first department and the clinic of surgery for advanced training of doctors of the Military Medical Academy named after S.M. Kirov is evaluated. 849 cases of aortic valve replacement were retrospectively studied (626 (74%) men, 223 (26%) women). The average age of the patients was 51.8 ± 9.7 years. It was established that the main causes of aortic valve damage were rheumocarditis, calcified aortic stenosis, infectious endocarditis and congenital heart disease in the form of a bicuspid aortic valve. A significant decrease in the incidence of rheumatism as a cause of aortic malformation was revealed from 36% in the period from 1991 to 2000 to 13% in the period from 2011 to 2020. The frequency of calcified aortic stenosis during this period, on the contrary, increased from 30% to 70%, respectively. At the same time, the relationship between the increase in life expectancy of the population of the Russian Federation and the frequency of occurrence of calcified aortic stenosis is traced. This is due to a long asymptomatic period that characterizes the natural course of this pathology, as a result of which the clinical manifestations of this pathology manifest, as a rule, only in old age. During the study period, an increase in the average age of patients who needed aortic valve replacement was also noted. If in the last decade of the twentieth century. it was 41.5 years, then in the period from 2011 to 2020, the average age of patients who needed aortic valve replacement increased to 61.5 years. Thus, over the past thirty years, there has been a significant change in the structure of the pathology of the aortic valve. Calcified aortic stenosis has become the most common cause of prosthetics of aortic malformation, against the background of a significant decrease in the frequency of rheumatic genesis of aortic valve damage.