If you didn’t already know, I have to share with you truth about life… Life is risk.

From the moment you wake up in the morning, you are in a risky situation.

Considering I live in Los Angeles, I think I have more risk than most. The drivers are crazy here! Every day I yell out, “What are you trying to kill me?”

My point… It is only natural to have some, if not lots of, concern about open heart surgery risk if you are the patient preparing for heart valve repair or heart valve replacement.

Heck! Any kind of cardiac procedure involves risk.

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I’ll never forget the first time I heard the phrase “Pumphead”. I was interviewing a former patient about her heart valve surgery experience for my book.

She was discussing the short-term mental impact of open heart bypass surgery. Specifically, she was remembering a challenging time during her recovery when she suffered from cardiac depression.

The former patient ended the discussion by saying, “Oh well. I guess I was just a pumphead.”

I did a double-take… “Pumphead?” I thought to myself, “What is pump head?”

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As you can read in my story, I had my aortic and pulmonary valves replaced (via the Ross Procedure) in 2005.

At thirty five years of age, my bicuspid aortic valve was worn down. My diseased valve suffered from aortic stenosis and regurgitation.

After surgery, my heart surgeon, Dr. Vaughn Starnes of USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, informed me that my aortic valve was “very, very sick… and very, very calcified.”

“Calcified?” I thought to myself, “What the heck does that mean?”

Well… It turns out that heart valves can calcify. When valve leaflets calcify, the leaflets become thickened and hardened, producing a narrow valve opening.

To give you an idea of what a calcified aortic valve looks like, please see the picture below.

According to reports, Fibro-calcific degeneration occurs mostly in the aortic valve and it most commonly impacts adults over 65 years of age.

Pretty interesting picture, right?

Keep on tickin!

There are a number of symptoms for mitral valve prolapse as I have written about in a prior blog. However, I just received an email asking, “Can you have back pain with mitral valve prolapse?”

This is a pretty interesting question. I’ll tell you why.

First, for three years before my heart valve surgery I had chronic, lower back pain. I saw chiropractors. I saw massage therapists. I had prolotherapy done. I had cranial sacral therapy. I even went to a Chinese healer.

Guess what? Nothing helped!

The other reason this is interesting because after my heart surgery recovery, I noticed that my lower back pain was no longer present. It’s been awhile now since my aortic and pulmonary valve replacements (about 20 months), but my lower back pain is gone.

Interesting, right? Maybe back pain is a symptom of heart valve disorders including aortic stenosis and mitral valve regurgitation?

Anyways, that’s about all I know about back pain as a symptom of mitral valve prolapse.

Keep on tickin!

I write this blog twenty months after open heart surgery. In 2005, I had a double heart valve replacement surgery via the Ross Procedure.

So you know, I am now fully recovered. I am back surfing and I just Scuba dived for the first time since my aortic and pulmonary valve replacements.

“Why I am I telling you this?”

I share this with you – the patient or caregiver – to help you understand that most patients do not die from open heart cardiac surgery. Trust me. The statistics are real.

Yes… There is some risk with open heart surgery.

However, on the whole, open heart surgery survival rates continue to improve. When I conducted my initial research for my book, The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery, the open heart surgery survival rate was 97% or 98% (depending on the reference).

You should also know that some noninvasive heart surgery procedures (including robotic heart valve repair) maintain a mortality rate close to 0.0%, according to certain heart care centers.

Yes. You read that right! Zero percent!

Plus, surgical technology and medical science is rapidly advancing. That said, survival rates for specific procedures continue to improve. Consider that in 2003, the Cleveland Clinic’s inpatient mortality rate for isolated mitral valve repair was only 0.3%.

I hope this is helping you see that most heart surgeries result in life, not in death. If you would like to know more, please read “Dispelling The Fear Of Heart Surgery”.

I hope this helps you better understand open heart surgery survival rates!

Keep on tickin!