This volume, with 66 papers by 236 authors, ranges widely across the field of valve-replacement surgery, including such related subjects as normal valve structure and function, in vitro testing of prosthetic valves, materials for prosthetic valves and other devices in contact with blood, and myocardial function. Papers from most of the major centers involved in this work present early and late clinical results in several thousand valve-replacement operations. While much of this material has appeared in the literature in a somewhat different form, there is certainly no other single source which brings together so much information about valves.
Tremendous advances have taken place in the last eight years. The first conference, in 1960, contained reports on a total of 11 mitral-valve replacements with only one patient surviving for ten months. Of 36 patients with aortic-valve replacement, the mortality was 42%. The reports in this volume indicate that total valve replacement