{"id":736,"date":"2009-03-16T09:05:38","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T14:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2009\/03\/16\/how-long-will-i-be-in-the-hospital-asks-wayne\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T18:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T23:08:06","slug":"how-long-will-i-be-in-the-hospital-asks-wayne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2009\/03\/16\/how-long-will-i-be-in-the-hospital-asks-wayne\/","title":{"rendered":"“How Long Will I Be In The Hospital?” Asks Wayne"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just received a great question from Wayne. He writes, “Adam – At the ripe age of 62, I’ll be having my mitral valve replaced<\/a> due to severe regurgitation from prolapse (To learn more about prolapsed mitral valves, click here<\/a>.). I know a woman who was in the hospital for 9 days. Is it common for valve patients to be in the hospital for that long? Thanks for all that you do! Wayne”<\/p>\n

There are really three answers to this question. The first answer I’ll provide is based on patient data I collected during a survey. In that survey, I asked over 75 former surgical heart valve patients the question, “How long were you in the hospital?” As you can see on the chart below, the average response was 5 days.\u00a0 At the same time, there are patients who undergo less-invasive operations, including robotic mitral valve surgery<\/a>, that may go home in 3 days.<\/p>\n

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\"HowPatient Days In Hospital Following Valve Surgery<\/div>\n

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The second answer is for patients who have catheter-based heart valve operations.\u00a0 Those patients may go home between 1 to 3 days.\u00a0 That’s right. Patients who receive minimally-invasive therapies including transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR)<\/a> are in the hospital for a much shorter time because there is no incision to the patient’s chest or ribs.\u00a0 In addition, transcatheter patients do not go on the heart-lung machine and many of them do not go under general anesthesia. That said, transcatheter therapies are not available and\/or recommended for all patients. So, please discuss this with your doctor.<\/p>\n

Lastly, I’ll provide a third answer t0 Wayne’s question which is, “It depends”. As I have learned over the years, every patient case is unique. In some situations, I know patients that have left the hospital after two days. In other cases, due to heart surgery complications<\/a>, I know patients who stayed in the hospital for more than three weeks.<\/p>\n

I hope that helps Wayne (and perhaps you) better understand how long heart surgery patients stay in the hospital.<\/p>\n

Related Links:<\/p>\n