Hi and welcome
you don't have an indication of age in your bio, but if your picture is accurate (read current) you're well over 60. I'll assume that is the case but if its not then my thoughts are no longer accurate
Since I have a valve with a predicted useful life of 12-15 years on the short end, I'm interested in 2 things:
- How to increase the useful life of the valve I have (Edwards Perimount Magna Ease)
you can't really ... its a non serviceable item and from what I understand an item which does not have the tolerances and accuracies of manufacture that modern materials (like pyrolytic carbon or steel for instance) have.
If you're interested you can dig through this article (which is good and current) however I wouldn't disagree with the 12 ~ 15 year except to say "that's not the short end, that's the likely end".
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.120.018506
If you get 20 that's pretty much where the rope runs out. I'll leave it to you do work out how old you'll be at the 20 year mark.
- Advances in replacement of artificial valves such that stroke-risk is lessened. (TAVR Valve in valve is the current standard, but high stroke risk)
Guidance and expertise appreciated!
This last point is not supported by the evidence at hand. Claims are made in OpEd advertorials and then the underlying studies are seldom read by the target audience (the patient).
Either way I think there is nothing wrong with your choice, and as long as you were over 60 when you had the valve placed in that you stand a good chance of getting 15. The more active you are however the less likely you'll get 20 than 15. My reasoning here is that (not least) the mechanical wear on something that's flexing (not pivoting on a hinge) is cumulative in damage. Lets say you have an average HR during the day of 80 (including exerized, elevation after eating, stress, drinking a bit of booze and tea or coffee). This means that you have probably around 42 million valve actuations per year. This calculates out to
840.96 million beats in a 20 year period and assuming an average daily HR of 80bpm or
946.08 at 90pbm
Now if you add in some more exersize you may push that up to nearly to over a billion. So achieving the goal of 1 billion is not certain because of factors like this:
1. Many tissue valves will go to 1 billion cycle in-vitro - what's not said is what the standard deviation for failure is due to the extremely small sample size.
I've underlined his text (he didn't)
So its a craps shoot.
Bottom line is this: don't worry about things like extending valve duration.
If you were worried about such things you made an incorrect choice to start with and instead just focus on having a good life and looking after your health with good diet, moderate exersize and healthy living.
Life is unpredictable at best, so just enjoy what you have and focus on what you can change.
(Stoic viewpoint)
Best wishes
......with very little success.
