Surgical Pathology of Combined Aortic Stenosis and Insufficiency: A Study of 213 Cases

The gross surgical pathologic features of the aortic valve were reviewed in 213 patients who had had clinically combined aortic stenosis and insufficiency and aortic valve replacement at our institution during the years 1965, 1970, 1975, and 1980. The three most common causes were postinflammatory disease (69%) and calcification of congenitally bicuspid (19%) and unicommissural (6%) aortic valves. Other causes included infective endocarditis (2%) and congenitally quadricuspid or malformed tricuspid aortic valves (1% each); the cause was indeterminate in 1%. In the postinflammatory and bicuspid states, calcification tended to be more extensive in men than in women. The relative incidence of postinflammatory disease in our study did not change appreciably from 1965 to 1980, despite the steadily decreasing incidence of acute rheumatic fever reported in western countries.