Safety of Mechanical and Biological Aortic Valve Prostheses in Older Patients

Abstract

We thank Yurekli and colleagues1 for their interest in our work describing long-term outcomes of mechanical vs biological valve prostheses after surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in patients aged more than 70 years.2 As noted, we found higher all-cause mortality with mechanical valve prostheses already in the early follow-up (1-year mortality 13.5% vs 8.1%; hazard ratio 1.65, P = .013). This disadvantage continued to increase later in the follow-up.2 The 10-year cumulative all-cause mortality after SAVR in first-year survivors was 46.7% with mechanical and 37.1% with biological prostheses (hazard ratio 1.40, P = .005).