The Golden Lounge

[Theo]

I remember when I first started seeing the new tissue (porcine or bovine) aortic valves in my patients while scanning their hearts in the 90's. At that time, patients were told that the life expectancy of those valves was hopefully 5 years. Over time, I scanned those patients on an annual basis for several years until they started stretching out their scans. 5 years became 10, and then 10 became 15. By the time I retired in '18 I had some patients that still had those valves. In addition, new patients were now being told 10+ years valve life expectancy. As with a lot of medicine when something new evolves, it's more of a "wait and see" cause we don't know issue.