During 2010, this global community of patients and caregivers actively discussed many topics that impacted our own, heart valve surgery experiences. That said, I just reviewed all 179 posts from 2010 to determine the “Top 10 Heart Valve Surgery Blogs of 2010″.

To develop this list, I used several factors including web traffic reports, your comments and your emails. As you might imagine, this was more difficult than expected. Similar to last year, we even had a tie.

So… Without further ado, here are the top ten heart valve surgery blogs of 2010:

10. The importance of second opinions and patient advocacy, revealed by Anne Shannon from Colorado, propelled “Remote Second Opinion Changes Anne’s Surgical Approach” to the tenth spot on our list.

9. We were, once again, perplexed by the lack of awareness to the patient benefits derived from cardiac rehabilitation programs — given a September, 2010 report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. That said, “Patient Concern: Cardiac Rehab Referrals Continue To Disappoint” arrives in the ninth position on our list.

8. The on-air announcement of Barbara Walters’ aortic valve replacement surgery resulted in an immediate traffic spike the moment we posted “Barbara Walters Recovering From Heart Valve Surgery”.

7.  Thanks to an email from Shirley, “Incision Site or Full Body Shave?” became a very active blog as we evaluated different patient experiences specific to this pre-operating room event.

6. An inspirational patient story about Ken rocketed “From Stroke… To Heart Valve Replacement… To The Gym” to the sixth spot on our list.

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With the exception of Barbara Walters’ heart valve surgery in May, this year was relatively quiet for public figures needing heart valve repair or heart valve replacement operations. However, our list of “well-known patients” did expand during the final week of 2010.

On Friday, December 24th, Charles Schwab, the chairman and founder of Charles Schwab Corp., underwent successful heart valve replacement surgery.

Charles Schwab, 73, Heart Valve Replacement Patient

According to reports, Charles Schwab is resting comfortably and recuperating well from Friday’s surgery. Doctors expect Schwab, like other patients, to return home from the hospital in the next few days. If you were unaware, Charles Schwab — who is married with 5 children — is a pioneer in the discount brokerage industry, which gives small investors direct access to Wall Street by charging lower fees than full-service brokerages.

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The technology within minimally invasive heart valve treatment continues to advance… quickly. That said, many of our recent discussions have focused on transcatheter approaches for aortic valve replacement (via the Sapien) and mitral valve repair (using the MitraClip) for mitral regurgitation.

Medtronic’s CoreValve For Aortic Valve Replacment

Last week, Medtronic announced the beginning of its CoreValve clinical trial in the United States. The first CoreValve transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) procedure was performed by Dr. David Adams and Dr. Samin Sharma at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

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Hi everybody,

Ethan, Robyn and I wanted to wish you all a very safe and very happy holidays!!!

Keep on tickin!

No need to preface this… Prepare for patient inspiration.

I feel honored to share with you that our website sponsors the Iron Heart Racing team. If you have a minute, you may want to learn about its extraordinary leader, David “IronHeart” Watkins, a former aortic valve replacement patient and endurance athlete.

Keep on tickin’ Iron Heart Racing Team & David!