Artificial heart valve Artificial heart valve An artificial heart valve is a device implanted in the heart of a patient with valvular heart disease. When one of the four heart valves malfunctions, the medical choice may be to replace the natural valve with an artificial valve. This requires open-heart surgery. Valves are integral to the normal physiological functioning of the human heart. Natural heart valves are evolved to forms that perform the functional requirement of inducing unidirectional blood flow through the valve structure from one chamber of the heart to another. Natural heart valves become dysfunctional for a variety of pathological causes. Some
Human rights in Argentina suicide. In March a federal court released two Coast Guard constables who were arrested in connection with the case. In March 2008 the National Human Rights Secretariat pressed homicide charges against former economy minister Jose Martinez de Hoz, who served under the military dictatorship, for the death of economist Juan Carlos Casariego Del Bel. In March 2008 former navy lieutenant commander Ricardo Cavallo was extradited from Spain to Argentina to face charges of crimes against humanity committed during the military dictatorship. Cavallo was indicted in July and remained in pretrial detention at year's end. In May 2008 federal authorities indicted