Wow. A lot of strong opinions. In CAPITAL LETTERS. I am getting an On-X valve on Thursday. My Dr also does St Jude and if I wake up and he says he went with that instead I will be fine with it, and I am not going to spend 2 seconds discussing whether he used the right size or not. If my surgeon and cardiologist say to keep the warfarin in a range that’s the range I will keep it in. I trust these particular doctors, that is the key. The only decision I wanted to make in this whole thing is it has to be a mechanical approach, at 59 I can’t see any advantage in the alternatives. Beyond that I almost feel like getting the non expert patient involved in the medical decisions can be counterproductive and lead to anxiety, pre and post surgery. I have had like 15 other surgeries, large and small and in no other case have the doctors left it all up to me and had me on Google and YouTube trying to figure it out. When I had my knee replacement the guy said basically “here’s the gear we‘re going with, end of discussion“ and I never had to worry about it. One thing I have learned is that there is more complexity to any of these operations than I as a non medical person can really appreciate.