Aortic Cusps

ECHONOMY
Tools for Echocardiographic Calculations
Muhamed Saric, MD, PhD
New York University

Aortic Cusps

Purpose

To provide an overview of the aortic valve types based on the number of valve cusps.

Types of Aortic Valve

	Unicuspid	Bicuspid	Tricuspid	Quadricuspid
Number of cusps	1	2	3	4
Prevalence (%)	0.02%	1-2%	Normal	0.008 - 0.013%
Per 10,000	2	100-200		0.8 - 1.3
Primary complication	Aortic stenosis	Aortic stenosis or regurgitation		Aortic regurgitation
Anatomic features	Usually unicommissural	Raphe between RCC + LCC = 80% of cases; RCC + NCC = 20% of cases		Cusps are usually of unequal size
RCC, right coronary cusp; LCC, left coronary cusp; NCC, noncoronary cusp

References

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Roberts WC. The congenitally bicuspid aortic valve: a study of 85 autopsy cases. Am J Cardiol. 1970;26:72–83.

Tutarel O. The quadricuspid aortic valve: a comprehensive review. J Heart Valve Dis. 2004;13:534–537.

Quadricuspid aortic valve: Imaging findings on multidetector helical CT with echocardiographic correlation. Jacobs JE, Srichai M, Kim D, Hecht E, Kronzon I.
J Comput Assist Tomogr. 2006 Jul-Aug;30(4):569-71.

Patel, R.J., Patel, J.N., Zakir, R.M., Dabu, L., and Saric M. Quadricuspid aortic valve with four equal cusps in a quinquagenarian. Am J Geriatr Cardiol 2005;14(6):333-4.

Feliciano E, Steinberg E, Kronzon I. Images in cardiovascular medicine: quadricuspid aortic valve. Circulation. 1998 Jan 6-13;97(1):113.