After the introduction of aortic valve (AV) and root replacement (Bentall–De Bono procedure), survival changed dramatically for patients with AV and/or root pathologies, including patients with Marfan syndrome or other genetic connective tissue diseases (CTD) [1, 2]. Since the latter mentioned patients are presented for surgery at a very young age, mechanical prosthesis is generally chosen over the biological. The consequent need for life-long anticoagulation exposes the patients to the potential, sometimes severe complications accounting up to 5% per year [3]. Due to this fact, AV-sparing techniques have been evolving over the last 30 years. Especially, AV reimplantation, as described by David and Feindel in 1992, became the standard technique for valve-sparing aortic root replacement with excellent short- and long-term results, even in patients with Marfan syndrome or other CTD [2, 4, 5]. In this issue of the European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Gil et al. describe their experience with AV reimplantation (David operation) in 157 patients with Marfan syndrome (143 patients) and other CTD [6]. The presented cohort is one of the largest published yet. The early- and long-term outcomes (median of 7.3 years) are impressively good. Especially, survival at 10 and 15 years with 98% is excellent and not different to the general Spanish population for the same age and gender. Furthermore, reported freedom from greater than moderate aortic regurgitation and reintervention were 90% and 96% at 10 years, respectively. Importantly, all these patients were operated by the same cardiosurgical team. The clear message that can be derived from this article is that David operation is an excellent option for the surgical treatment of these patients. The authors also conclude these patients should be centralized in referral centres and operated by very experienced surgeons. Finally, based on these results, authors postulate the threshold for prophylactic surgery in CTD should be reviewed and lowered.