Balloon valvuloplasty and angioplasty have become accepted alternatives to surgery for valvar stenosis and coarctation of the aorta. Balloon dilation avoids a potentially painful operation, the long postoperative recovery, and at the same time offers substantial cost savings. However, such advantages are meaningless if the safety of the interventional procedure does not match or surpass the results of conventional surgery. This review summarizes a number of studies that compare the natural history of surgical therapy with that of balloon pulmonary and aortic valvuloplasty and balloon coarctation angioplasty. It appears that, regardless of age, balloon valvuloplasty is preferable to surgical valvotomy. For both aortic stenosis and coarctation of the aorta, balloon valvuloplasty and surgical valvotomy produce comparable relief of the hemodynamic obstruction. However, because the length of follow-up after the balloon angioplasties has been short, the actual risk of developing severe aortic regurgitation (postaortic valvuloplasty) and aortic aneurysms (postcoarctation angioplasty) has not been trivial, a large prospective follow-up of both of these interventional procedures will be mandatory before either can be judged superior to surgical therapy.