A 107-year-old man who underwent an operation more than five years ago to replace an aortic valve is the longest-living person to have received the pioneering heart surgery, Taipei-based Cheng Hsin General Hospital said.
The hospital on Tuesday said that its cardiac surgery team performed transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) on the patient, surnamed Chen (陳), when he was 102.
The previous record for the oldest living person to have undergone TAVI surgery was a man who had the operation at 99, but passed away before he reached 107, the hospital said.
The aortic valve usually opens when blood is pumped from the heart to the rest of the body, hospital superintendent Wei Jeng (魏崢) said.
Aortic stenosis is a condition where the aortic valve does not open and close properly, which can result in breathlessness, chest pain, dizziness and heart failure.
About 2 percent of people older than 65 develop aortic stenosis, with the ratio doubling to 4 percent for those older than 85, he said.
Most of those who have this condition die within two years, Wei said.
For people with aortic valve problems, the usual treatment is open-heart valve surgery, which has a 97 percent success rate, he said.
However, for people who are too old or who have other medical problems, open-heart surgery might be too risky, he added.
For those patients, TAVI, a procedure that allows an aortic valve to be implanted using a long narrow tube called a catheter, is considered preferable to open-heart surgery, he said.
The cardiac surgery team at Cheng Hsin is one of the most experienced in the nation at performing TAVI.
Of the 2,200 patients who have received such surgeries in the nation, 560 were done at Cheng Hsin, he said.
The procedure is not covered by the National Health Insurance program and is relatively expensive, he said, adding that for younger patients, open-heart surgery is better suited to their needs.
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