{"id":3916,"date":"2023-10-11T15:45:02","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T15:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/?page_id=3916"},"modified":"2023-10-11T17:49:12","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T17:49:12","slug":"tissue-valve-durability-young-patient","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/tissue-valve-durability-young-patient\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiac Research Update: Tissue Heart Valve Replacement Durability for Young Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Centers for Disease Control estimate that 2.5% of the population has heart valve disease. As a result, patients may need a surgical heart valve replacement to prevent debilitating symptoms, health risks and premature death. If the time comes that you need to discuss valve replacement options with a cardiac surgeon, multiple factors will be considered when choosing the best prosthetic device for you. Key considerations may include the patient\u2019s age, projected durability of valve type and quality-of-life.<\/p>\n<p>To learn new research presented at the American Association of Thoracic Surgery Conference (AATS) about tissue heart valve replacements for younger patients, we met with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\">Dr. Patrick McCarthy<\/a>, the Executive Director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. During his extraordinary career, Dr. McCarthy has performed over 10,000 cardiac procedures including more than 5,000 heart valve operations.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6y9V6svRKNg?si=Sl5BWvdmrwm50x3d?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Key Learnings About Tissue Valve Durability<\/h2>\n<p>Here are key insights shared by Dr. McCarthy during our interview:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dr. McCarthy\u2019s Northwestern Medicine team and a team from the University of Michigan led by Dr. Steven Bolling met to review the data specific to tissue and mechanical valve replacements. Dr. McCarthy and Dr. Bolling debated the dataset during an AATS session called, \u201cHow Low Can You Go?\u201d. The goal of the friendly debate was to establish how valve selection \u2013 either mechanical or tissue valves \u2013 can optimize the lifetime management of valve disease for patients.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/profileImages\/195_129_152.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Patrick McCarthy\" width=\"129\" height=\"152\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\">Dr. Patrick McCarthy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As we have discussed many times here at HeartValveSurgery.com, each patient is unique. Therefore, valve choice (mechanical or tissue) and the right timing for surgery need to be carefully decided by the patient, their surgeon and the entire medical team. Dr. McCarthy states, \u201cWhat\u2019s most important for the patients to understand is that it\u2019s really their decision. They have to live with that valve for the rest of their life.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>There are pros and cons to both mechanical and tissue valves.<\/li>\n<li>Mechanical valves do not typically wear out as fast as tissue valves do, but they have a significant risk of causing stroke due to blood clot formation on the valve. Specific to stroke rate, Dr. McCarthy emphasized, \u201cIt\u2019s significant. It\u2019s 3% per year. So, at 10 years&#8230; It\u2019s 30%, 20 years 60%.\u201d Patients need to use blood thinners, like Coumadin, for the rest of their life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3919 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/..\/Images\/prosthetic-heart-valve-replacement-mccarthy.jpg\" alt=\"Prosthetic Heart Valve Replacements\" width=\"650\" height=\"363\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tissue valves do not require the patient to use blood thinners. However, tissue valves &#8211; which are typically made from cows or pigs &#8211; wear out within about 10-15 years. As a result, the patient may need another heart valve surgery in the future.<\/li>\n<li>The critical questions surrounding tissue valves are \u201cHow low can you go (age wise) to safely put a tissue valve in a patient?\u201d and \u201cWhat can you expect for tissue valve durability?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Dr. McCarthy states, \u201cThese are really important questions. Previously, the idea was that the valve would wear out faster if the patient is younger. The study presented at the conference showed that durability looked much better than we\u2019ve ever seen before even for patients in the 40-50-60-year age range. It reassured us that for patients with tissue valves who are young in their 50s and 40s, it could still be a good choice for them.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Previously, patients who had a tissue valve at a younger age would likely need a second open heart operation in the future when the tissue valve failed. Now, a possibility may be to replace the valve via a transcatheter, non-invasive, valve-in-valve, approach. Instead of re-opening the chest, a catheter can enter the body through the patient\u2019s transfemoral vein (near the groin), be threaded up to the heart, and deploy another valve inside the old worn-out surgical valve. \u201cWhen you look ahead 20 years, that won\u2019t be the same risk for patients. That\u2019s going to be safer,\u201d Dr. McCarthy added.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. McCarthy and the Northwestern Medicine team are focused on the lifetime management of heart valve disease for their patients.\u00a0 Dr. McCarthy states, \u201cWe absolutely embrace that. We really want to think through with patients and what is going to be the impact to their life to do this.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Thanks Dr. McCarthy and Northwestern Medicine!<\/h2>\n<p>On behalf of our patient community, many thanks to Dr. McCarthy for sharing his new research and insights about tissue valve durability and mechanical valves.\u00a0 Also, many thanks to Northwestern Medicine for taking such great care of heart valve patients.<\/p>\n<p>Related links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\">See Over 175 Patient Reviews of Dr. Patrick McCarthy<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/afib-stroke-risk-reduction\/\">Surgeon Q&amp;A: Stroke Risk Reduction for Heart Valve &amp; Atrial Fibrillation Patients<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the deaf and hard of hearing members of our community, I have provided a written transcript of this interview below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"cms.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"class_list":["post-3916","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-heart-valve-replacement"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3916"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3941,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3916\/revisions\/3941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}