Ok so i am 16 years old, and i have Aortic stenosis, bicuspid aortic valve, aortic regurgitation and an Enlarged aorta. I am soon going to be getting an aortic valve replacement. I am just wondering what happens before and after the surgery and how long i will be in the hospital, how long in the ICU, what kind of tubes/machines will i need? any information will help. thanks :)What happens before, during, and after an aortic valve replacement?Mechanical valve will last for ever. But the red blood cells will be damaged and clot will be formed in the implanted mechanical valve. In order to prevent the formation of blood clot, the patient has to take warfarin (a blood thinner) for the rest of his/her life.
If pig valve is used, there is no necessity to take the medicine (warfarin) for the rest of his/her life. But the tissue valve will function only for 15 years.
Since you are too young, you have to opt for mechanical valve and to take the medicine for the rest of your life.
Valve replacement is indicated for virtually all who can tolerate surgery. In younger patients, the patient's own pulmonic valve can be used, providing good durability; a bioprosthesis is then used to replace the pulmonic valve (Ross procedure). Most often, the aortic valve is replaced with a mechanical or bioprosthetic valve.
You will stay in an intensive care unit for the first 2 or 3 days following the operation. Your heart functions will be monitored constantly. The average hospital stay is 1 - 2 weeks. Complete recovery will take a few weeks to several months, depending on your health before surgery.What happens before, during, and after an aortic valve replacement?They will probably do a tissue valve replacement so there would be no need for life long therapy of blood thinners. As for the post op. Our hospital recovers heart surgeries right in our cardiovascular intensive care unit. We do not reverse anesthesia, we let our patients wake up on their own. Because of this, we have them on a ventilator until they wake up and are functional enough to breath on their own. We also monitor things very invasively, so there are a lot of lines. We have a Swan Gantz catheter which measures the pressures in the heart, an ART line, which measures your blood pressure internally, and an I.V. that goes directly into your heart called a central venous line. Usually after you wake up from surgery, if all your pressures look good, we start to take out those invasive lines and we get you out of bed. Most of our patients are in our unit for 1-2 days if all goes well. Then we transfer them up to the telemetry floor for a couple of days and then we send them home. Valve replacement surgery is still a major surgery but we do them every day and the majority of our patients come out of surgery just fine and are home in a week.
