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Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering

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Theses/Dissertations

2008

Glycosaminoglycans

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Ecm Stabilization Strategies For Bioprosthetic Heart Valves For Improved Durability, Devanathan Raghavan Dec 2008

Ecm Stabilization Strategies For Bioprosthetic Heart Valves For Improved Durability, Devanathan Raghavan

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Abstract
Approximately 85,000 heart valve replacement surgeries are performed every year in United States and about 300,000 surgeries worldwide. It is estimated that half of them are mechanical valve replacements and the other half bioprosthetic valve replacements. The use of bioprosthetic heart valves is slowly increasing. Bioprosthetic heart valves are made from porcine aortic valves or bovine pericardium. Commercially these bioprostheses are currently crosslinked using glutaraldehyde (GLUT) to prevent tissue degradation and reduce tissue antigenicity. GLUT crosslinks these bioprostheses by stabilizing the collagen present in the tissue via a Schiff base reaction of the aldehyde with the hydroxylysine / lysine …