I'm curious,and since this is an older thread, not hijacking someone trying to make a decision for an upcoming surgery this looks like a good spot.
I personally can't imagine any younger person being told their valve WILL last 30 years or even 20. Most of the people I see say their doctors mentioned anything about 20-30 years are people in their 60s. But even then they know a tissue valve can need replaced sooner. I always think you should hope for the best but make sure you will be fine if things don't turn out that way and your valve (or any surgery) fails much sooner for any reason. Heck Justin's dacron conduit that should have lasted forever needed replaced in 2 years.
I know most of the people that have had their valves over say 15 years, most likely would NOT be a member of a forum that is strictly for heart valve replacements, that was started a while after they had their valve replaced, since most look for a group when they are having issues or looking at another surgery. I know a few people that like TBone, were born with complex CHDs and have had their tissue valve pretty much since childhood, I don't know exactly how long, but well over 20 years. They are usually on the right side. Maybe there is more older (as far as time since they had their heart issues, surgery not actually their age) people who join CHD groups, since it covers all congenital heart defects and what goes along with it and often part of their CHD involves 1 or more valves, but they are usually looking for info on something else, or as adults looking for other people "like them" who grew up having heart surgeries. (I am NOT saying well over 20 is average or to be expected, just that I know of some)
Also valve surgery itself isn't even THAT old (about 50 years) and many of the people that have had any of the earlier valves, even those that had them replaced later have passed on all ready, many from old age and other non heart related reasons, but some because of their hearts.
I see the question about how old are the bovine or porcine valves every so often see people bring up the fact there can't be THAT many people that have had their valve long since they aren't that old, which is fair.
What I know about the Bovine perimount off the top of my head is CCF and 3 other places in the US started using it in trials in 81 (29 years ago) and they were following quite a few people, BUT this was a 2nd generation valve, so I'm not sure when the 1st generation started being used, (or if anyone is still alive with it) and of course this shows one of the big problems, by the time you do have the long term (over 25 year) data on any valve, it usually is outdated because their is a newer model with a much shorter track record in people.
But when I was reading this thread, it made me wonder, most people including ME, say if you get a mechanical valve it SHOULD last your life time. BUT when I was thinking about people who had their tissue valve a long time, I started wonderring the same about the mechanical valves.
Do the valves they use most today,(SJM, ATS, ON-X, Carbonetic) have a REAL track record and Data of lasting 30 or more years in many people? I personally can't think of many people (I know Dick has had his mechanical valve over 40 years, but that isn't used any more) who have had their original mechanical valve over 30 years and it hasn't been replaced. I know ON-X HOPES to last well over 30 years in patients, but believe it has a while to go. I know everyone says the "gold Standard -tried and True" mechancical valve is the St.Jude, but when I did a quick search of their site, to see when this valve started being used, I found "More than 1.9 million St. Jude Medical mechanical valves have been implanted worldwide during the past 25 years,* making them the most widely used and well-studied valves available."
http://health.sjm.com/heart-valve-answers/treatment-options/heart-valve-replacement.aspx
That seemed short to me, so I looked at pubmed quickly and from what I found, (in the US) it looks like the gold standard SJM, started being used in people around the same time the 2nd generation Perimount was. I found some early 2 year results from 83
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15227147 Tex Heart Inst J. 1983 Mar;10(1):11-6.
The St. Jude medical valve: early clinical results in 253 patients.
Duncan JM, Cooley DA, Livesay JJ, Ott DA, Reul GJ, Walker WE, Frazier OH.
and a 25 year study from a couple months ago
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20417752 Twenty-five year experience with the St. Jude medical mechanical valve prosthesis. that started in 79
BACKGROUND: We evaluated all adult St. Jude mechanical valve recipients at our institution since the initial implant in January 1979 and now present our 25-year experience. METHODS: Nine hundred forty-five valve recipients were followed prospectively at 12-month intervals from January 1979 to December 2007. RESULTS: Operative mortality was 3% in the aortic valve recipients and 5% in the mitral valve recipients. Follow-up was 95% complete. Among aortic valve recipients, late actuarial survival was 81% +/- 2%, 59% +/- 2%, 41% +/- 3%, 28% +/- 3%, and 17% +/- 4% at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years, respectively. Twenty-five-year freedom from reoperation, thromboembolism, bleeding, and endocarditis was 90% +/- 2%, 69% +/- 5%, 67% +/- 3%, and 9% 3 +/- 2% respectively. Among mitral valve recipients late actuarial survival was 84% +/- 2%, 63% +/- 3%, 44% +/- 3%, 31% +/- 3%, and 23% +/- 4% at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years, respectively. Twenty-five-year freedom from reoperation, thromboembolism, bleeding and endocarditis was 81% +/- 10%, 52% +/- 8%, 64% +/- 6%, and 97% +/- 1%. Freedom from valve-related mortality and morbidity at 25 years was 26% +/- 7% and 29% +/- 6% for aortic and mitral valve replacement, respectively. Freedom from valve-related mortality was 66% +/- 8% and 87% +/- 3% for aortic and mitral valve replacement, respectively
Maybe someone else knows how long the mechanical valves that are being used today have been around? I didn't check ATS, Carbonetics, because I'm pretty sure the SJM is the oldest in use, so that's the one I looked at
Since many people do choose a mechanical valves in the hopes of it lasting their lifetime, it would be interesting to know if there is alot of data out there showing many patients have had their same mechanical a few valves decades.
