Heart-Valve Patients Should Have Earlier Surgery, Study Suggests - The New York Times - 0 views
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For decades, people with failing heart valves who nevertheless felt all right would walk out of the cardiologist’s office with the same “wait and see” treatment plan: Come back in six or 12 months. No reason to go under the knife just yet
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The trial, whose results were published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine, could change the way doctors treat severe aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the valve that controls blood flow from the heart.
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Replacing people’s heart valves, even if they were not yet experiencing any ill effects, appeared to roughly halve their risk of being unexpectedly hospitalized for heart problems over at least two years, the trial found.
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