Adam’s Heart Valve Surgery Blog

Blog Topics: Aortic Valve Replacement Surgery; How Many Aortic Valve Replacement Surgeries Are Conducted Each Year?

Some of the most common thoughts that patients experience following severe heart valve disease diagnosis (including stenosis and regurgitation) are, “Oh My Gosh! Heart Valve Surgery? Noooooooooooh. It can’t be! Me? But, I don’t know anybody who had heart valve replacement or heart valve repair surgery!”

In my experience, this thought pattern can ultimately drive the patient into states of fear and loneliness.

However, when we learn more about the facts and figures of heart valve surgery, it is possible to dispell the fear of heart valve replacement or heart valve repair.

“Why is Adam so confident about this?” you wonder.

Well… I’ll tell you why.

I have had two heart valves operated on and replaced - my aortic valve and pulmonary valve were both replaced via the Ross Procedure.

Furthermore, since launching this website and writing my book, I have only come across one patient who did not make it through the surgery. That is a sad fact. But, when you consider that I have spoke with thousands of patients and caregivers about cardiac surgery, it supports the evidence that heart valve replacement surgery risk continues to be manageable. Especially, when you consider life expectancy after heart surgery.

Still, I am always trying to better understand just how many people have heart valve surgeries each year. As you would imagine, this information is not easy to locate. It took several weeks of research to learn and estimate the facts and figures about annual heart valve repair and heart valve replacement surgeries.

Even today, I continue to research the topic. Earlier this afternoon, I saw a brand new market research report about heart valve surgeries (on a world-wide basis). However, I did not want to pay the $100 for the report.

Then, about 15 minutes later, I was reading the Motley Fool about the recent Hansen acquisition of AorTx. In that analysis, I learned that the Hansen marketing team now suggests that 45,000 people have aortic valve replacement surgery every year in the United States alone.

The report also suggests that an equal number of people are ineligible for invasive open heart surgery (via median sternotomy) due to their specific high risk category (age, smoker, alcoholic, etc.)

One Week After My Open Heart Surgery

As you may know, that is one of the glimmers of minimally invasive procedures including catheter approaches and/or robotic heart valve surgery - that more “high-risk” patients can tolerate heart valve surgery without broken sternum recovery.

That said, if the non-invasive techniques continue to provide encouraging results, the number of heart valve surgeries could significantly increase in the near future.

I hope this helps explain more about the number of aortic heart valve replacement surgeries performed each year.

Keep on tickin,

Adam

Adam Pick is the author of The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery, a unique book which integrates the clinical facts of heart valve surgery with the personal experiences of an actual heart valve surgery patient. This special book was designed to help patients and caregivers better understand the realities of heart valve surgery (heart valve replacement and heart valve repair), to minimize patient stress and to enhance the patient’s recovery. To learn more about Adam’s heart valve surgery book, click here.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Heart Valve Surgery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print This Post | EMail This Post.