What Is The Most Commonly Operated On Heart Valve?
By Adam Pick on September 10, 2007
Hey everyone,
So, I just got stumped. I was asked a pretty unique question that I have never heard before. The question is, “What is the most commonly operated on heart valve?”
As you know, I’m not one to back down from a good, challenging question…
Therefore, I went to the Internet and started searching at Google.
Unfortunately, I did not find anything that statistically showed the number of surgeries by valve for any given period of time. That said, for this blog, I’m going to take an educated guess given my research and interviews with heart valve surgery patients and caregivers from around the world.
My mind tells me that the mitral valve and the aortic valve are the two, most popular valves that experience defect and surgery. If you were really going to press me on the topic, I would have to say the mitral valve is probably operated on more. I say this due to the fact that about 1 in 20 people have a mitral valve prolapse and, therefore, mitral valve regurgitation.
After that, I would guesstimate that the pulmonary valve is operated on most next and then the tricuspid valve.
If any of you have any ideas or statistics on this topic, I would love to know about them.
Keep on tickin!
Adam