WHAT ARE THE RISKS?

OPEN-HEART surgery has a mortality rate of around 2 per cent, as well as a 1 to 2 per cent risk of a stroke or needing a pacemaker afterwards. There is also a 1 to 2 per cent risk of permanent kidney damage.

‘THIS new valve is an absolute game-changer because it lasts three times as long as conventional valves,’ says Toufan Bahrami, a consultant cardiac surgeon at Harefield Hospital in London.

‘So instead of offering animal tissue valves only to the over-70s, we can now offer them to much younger people and spare them a lifetime on anticoagulant drugs.’