ABSTRACT
There is increased incidence of valvular heart diseases in recent years due to life style modifications. The mortality rates in valvular diseases are kept in pace using various modalities of treatments. One such lifesaving treatment is valve replacement surgeries. These are done by using mechanical valve prosthesis or tissue grafts. The tissue valves prosthesis, harvested from porcine heart are called as xenograft and are increasingly used in valve repair and replacement surgeries. In the present scenario, there is a smaller number of systematically analysed literatures available on the comparative anatomy of human and porcine heart valves. Hence this study was carried out to acquire knowledge and to put forth some points to future research works on heart valves. In this study, 20 formalin fixed porcine and human hearts were procured from slaughter house and cadavers respectively. The morphology and morphometry of tricuspid valve and mitral valve was observed and analysed using spss software 20 version. All the dependent variables were compared using student t test and independent sample test. The results were tabulated and compared. It was observed that the tricuspid and the mitral valve of the porcine resembles the corresponding human heart valves in morphology and morphometry and their values were coinciding to their maximum. The porcine valve resembles human heart valves in morphology and it can be used in designing valve substitutes in replacement surgeries. Porcine valve can also be used as bio-prosthesis by matching the morphometry and by reducing the geometrical difference to their minimum by using any interventional radiology.