{"id":3934,"date":"2011-02-20T09:53:58","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T14:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=3934"},"modified":"2025-05-12T19:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T00:20:11","slug":"lars-svensson-aortic-valve-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2011\/02\/20\/lars-svensson-aortic-valve-repair\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;What Are The Key Indicators For Aortic Valve Repair Vs. Aortic Valve Replacement?&#8221; By Dr. Lars Svensson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about a great coincidence&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Just a few minutes after receiving this patient question, Dr. Lars Svensson, the Chief of Cleveland Clinic&#8217;s Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute, walked up to my booth at the The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Conference. That said, here is Dr. Svensson&#8217;s response to the question, &#8220;What are the key indicators that a diseased aortic valve can be repaired not replaced?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZIEvCzBhEO0?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In the video above, Dr. Svensson addresses the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/modified-david-reimplantation-procedure\/\">Modified David Reimplantation Procedure<\/a>.\u00a0 That said, I thought you might like to see this next video that Dr. Svensson filmed for the members of our patient community about that specific technique.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hOm3b0rPPgI?rel=0?si=oRAKt0MJkjKTR751\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Thanks Dr. Svensson and Cleveland Clinic!<\/h2>\n<p>On behalf of our patient community, many thanks to Dr. Lars Svensson and the entire team at Cleveland Clinic for taking such great care of our patients!<\/p>\n<p>Related Links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Lars-Svensson-Cleveland-Ohio.php\">See Dr. Svensson&#8217;s Interactive Surgeon Profile<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2013\/02\/23\/patient-success-story-david-procedure-dr-lars-svensson\/\">Dr. Svensson&#8217;s Patient Success Story: Robert, The Elk Hunter<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the deaf and hard-of-hearing members of our community, I have provided a video transcript below.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: Hey, everybody. It\u2019s Adam and I\u2019m here in San Diego at the 47th annual STS convention. Very fortunate to be standing next to Dr. Lars Svensson, heart valve surgeon from the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Svensson has been in practice for just about 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Svensson: That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: And we\u2019re going to be answering a question that came in about aortic valve surgery, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/aortic-valve-regurgitation-symptoms.php\">aortic regurgitation<\/a>, and the question is: From a surgeon\u2019s perspective, when you\u2019re going to treat aortic valve regurgitation in surgery, what are the key indicators that you can repair a valve versus going in and having to replace that valve?<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Svensson: That\u2019s a very important question. In patients with aortic valve stenosis, we tried at one time to repair them but most of them failed within a year. So, it\u2019s really the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/leaking-heart-valve-symptoms.php\">patients with leaking valves<\/a> that we can repair and it\u2019s been technically the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/bicuspid-aortic-valve-symptoms.php\">patients with bicuspid valves<\/a>, which 2% of the population have, that we can repair about 70% of them. So that\u2019s my repair rate for bicuspid valves. We usually do them through a small keyhole incision, a noninvasive incision, and we do them with less than a 1% risk of death. And then the other group of patients are the patients with three leaflets. Often it can be a congenital type of problem, and in those patients, we do the David Reimplantation operation, and we\u2019ve got a series now, about 290 patients, and that\u2019s a great operation for those patients. Based on the echo, I can pretty much tell when I can repair the valve and the repair rate for those patients is about 90% and that\u2019s particularly important because these are young patients has often the bicuspid valve, leaking valves, so it\u2019s a young patient. We can repair the valves and the results are excellent. For the reimplantations, the durability is 96% at 10 years. In other words, a 4% failure rate and you don\u2019t have to be on Coumadin and blood thinners in other words. And for the bicuspid valves, not quite as good, but it\u2019s 91% freedom from another operation. But if you can get through those years when you\u2019re young without being on Coumadin, you can have a active lifestyle, and then later as you get older, we can put in a biological valve and in an older person, the biological heart valves have a much better durability and we\u2019re doing research now in putting a valve in a previously replaced biological valve, so that\u2019s another option coming down the road.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: And by &#8212; when you say valve in valve, are you talking about the transcatheter technologies that are coming out or something different?<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Svensson: That, too. We\u2019ve already done eight patients where we\u2019ve done a percutaneous valve with another valve in a failing valve or one that\u2019s not working very well, but in the patients who\u2019ve had previous open biological valves, we are working on putting in a new percutaneous valve, put it through the groin or through the left ventricular and putting that in, and there\u2019s a new technology we\u2019re working on in a valve that you put in and it\u2019s designed so you can then it open, but then you can go back and replace it percutaneously without opening the patient\u2019s chest again, so that\u2019s a new technology, too.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: Wow. That sounds very exciting and on behalf of all the patients, I want to thank you for the work that you are doing, the research, and your pursuit of healthy hearts.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Svensson: Well, we enjoy taking care of patients and that\u2019s what we all are doing this for is to ensure patients get better again.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: Well, there you have it. Again, Dr. Lars Svensson, thank you.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Svensson: You, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aortic-valve-repair"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934","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=3934"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41182,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions\/41182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}