{"id":2920,"date":"2010-09-20T18:50:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T23:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=2920"},"modified":"2025-11-06T13:12:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T18:12:18","slug":"mechanical-tissue-valve-replacements-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2010\/09\/20\/mechanical-tissue-valve-replacements-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;How Much Do Heart Valve Replacements Cost?&#8221; Asks Mike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just received a great email from Mike about heart valve replacements. Mike writes, &#8220;Adam &#8211; I&#8217;ve got a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/leaking-heart-valve-symptoms.php\">severely leaky valve<\/a> and need mitral surgery. I&#8217;m 55 and never knew about my prolapsed valve. Just curious&#8230; If the surgeon can&#8217;t repair my leaflets, how much do the replacement devices cost? Thanks, Mike&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Like Mike, I had this same question when I was diagnosed with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/aortic-stenosis-valve-heart-narrowing.php\">severe aortic stenosis<\/a>. I wanted to know just how much this little medical device cost.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/heart-valve-replacement-costs-pricing.jpg\" alt=\"Costs of Heart Valve Replacements - Mechanical, Tissue, Bioprosthetic, Homografts\" width=\"537\" height=\"220\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As you might imagine, obtaining pricing data on heart valve replacement devices is a bit difficult. You can&#8217;t just run down to your local Wal-Mart and order an ATS Open Pivot Valve. And, you definitely can&#8217;t purchase a Medtronic Freestyle pig valve from Amazon.com.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>However, I can share some anecdotal pricing information that I&#8217;ve collected over the years:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A cardiac sales representative told me, &#8220;Most mechanical and tissue valves go for about $5,000.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>A cardiac surgeon wrote me, &#8220;The interesting thing is that there is a list price for valves and then there are hospital specific prices.\u00a0 The cost of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-valve-replacement.php\">typical heart valve replacement<\/a> can differ by several thousand dollars.\u00a0 The range, however, is from $5,000 to $7,000 for a typical valve.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Another surgeon told me, &#8220;I can not provide specifics but heart valve replacements range from $2,000 to $10,000.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Financial reports indicate that new transcatheter solutions, like the Edwards&#8217; Sapien valve replacement, can cost over $25,000.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On one hand, you might react to those numbers with this thought, &#8220;Holy Moly! That&#8217;s a lot of money!&#8221; On the other hand, you might think, &#8220;That&#8217;s it! To keep me alive for another 10, 20 or 30 years&#8230; That&#8217;s nothing!&#8221; (Personally, the latter thought rushed through my brain as I digested these numbers.)<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of how you view the cost of heart valve replacement devices, we should probably remember that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2008\/08\/29\/mechanical-or-bioprosthetic-heart-valve-replacements\/\">mechanical and bioprosthetic devices<\/a> fall into the life sciences product category. The leading valve manufacturers &#8212; Edwards, Medtronic, Abbott &#8212; have to extend millions, or even billions, of dollars on research and development (R&amp;D) before they make one penny on a product sale. That said, pricing usually starts high as R&amp;D costs are recouped. Then, over time, pricing decreases &#8211; just like the computer, mobile phone or tablet in front of you. Remember when a laptop computer was $4,000?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-21271\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/globalization.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"235\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>To this point, I understand that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/tavr-procedure.php\/\">transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR)<\/a> devices, which are newer minimally-invasive technologies that do not require an incision to the patient&#8217;s chest or ribs, were initially over $30,000 when they were first sold following their respective clinical trials.<\/p>\n<p>As you can tell, I&#8217;m not a heart valve pricing guru. I have no idea where valves fall on the long-run pricing curve. But, I hope this information helps Mike (and perhaps you) learn more about the price of heart valve replacement devices.<\/p>\n<p>Related Link:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/costs-fees-estimates-money-insurance.php\">Heart Valve Surgery Costs and Expenses<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2008\/09\/16\/how-much-does-the-da-vinci-surgical-robot-cost\/\">Pricing the Da Vinici Robot for Heart Valve Surgery<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heart-valve-replacement"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2920"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42878,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2920\/revisions\/42878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}