Many complication may occur in patients with heart valve replacement. The thrombembolic and bleeding complications are the most considerable.
Choosing between the mechanic and biological valve prosthesis is very important due to many reasons. In case of mechanical valve prosthesis we can expect life long good function of the prosthesis at the expense of higher thrombembolic and bleeding complications.
The incidence of mechanical valve prosthesis thrombosis is in the range 0,2-1,8%/patient/year. The treatment depends on patient's condition and presence of valve prosthesis obstruction.
Reoperation, thrombolysis or anticoagulation therapy is considered. The bleeding complications are related to the need of life long anticoagulation therapy, to many factors on the patient's site and drug interactions of the warfarin.