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Question:
What centimeter squared measurement is considered critical aortic stenosis?
Is a 1.1 - 1.0 squared centimeter considered critical in an aortic heart valve? And in a patient who has moderate shortness of breath could they be a candidate for surgery?
submitted by Duana from United States on 4/9/2016
Answer:
by Texas Heart Institute cardiologist, Raymond F. Stainback, MD
An aortic valve area in the range of 1-1.1 is in the gray zone of moderate to severe. Severe is <1 cm2. There is no cut off value for "critical aortic stenosis" (but presumably that would be worse than severe). Moderate shortness of breath can be from a large variety of other possible diagnoses that should be considered before going to aortic valve surgery. However, the aortic valve area can be tricky to calculate in some individuals & the actual valve area could potentially be somewhat smaller or larger than the calculated value you were given. There are other values that are considered including the valve gradient and blood flow velocity. In general, a patient with "significant" aortic stenosis (which this is) warrants detailed evaluation and frequent follow up before a decision on whether to operate is made. Coronary artery disease can go along with aortic stenosis. Sometimes a heart catheterization is needed in order to establish surgical timing and to rule out coronary disease.
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Updated May 2016
