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What Is It Like Recovering From Aortic Valve Surgery?

By Adam Pick on August 26, 2007

One of the most common questions I receive about heart valve surgery focuses on the "recovery". As you can read in my story, I had a special type of aortic valve surgery known as the Ross Procedure.

That said, I can provide some personal insight in answering questions like:

"What is it like recovering from aortic valve surgery?"
"When did you return to work?"
"Is the recovery from aortic valve surgery painful?"

As you can probably tell, the list of questions regarding the recovery from open heart surgery could go on and on and on and on.

In my opinion, this is one of the biggest problems with cardiac surgery today.

There is simply not enough education about the recovery from procedures including aortic valve replacement and mitral valve repair. That said, I believe nurses and doctors need to be more pro-active in terms of managing the patient's expectations through each step of the recovery.

Why do I feel this way?

Well. During my recovery I experienced a number of lows, challenges and pitfalls that I believe could have been avoided IF there was more "hands-on" management of my recovery from aortic valve surgery. There are so many elements of the recovery that need to be considered.

So you know, that is that is the key reason why I wrote my book, The Patient's Guide To Heart Valve Surgery. Again, in my opinion, recovering from heart valve surgery should be about patient expectation, control and management. Instead, the patient is often left to fend for himself or herself throughout the recovery process.

How do I know this?

I interviewed 78 former heart valve surgery patients and their caregivers during the research for my book. The stories I heard throughout my interviews were very similar in nature when discussing topics like recovering from aortic valve surgery.

The Patient's Guide To Heart Valve Surgery is my attempt to help future patients and caregivers through each step of the surgical process.

Keep on tickin!
Adam

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Written by Adam Pick - Patient & Website Founder

Adam Pick is a heart valve patient and author of The Patient's Guide To Heart Valve Surgery. In 2006, Adam founded HeartValveSurgery.com to educate and empower patients. This award-winning website has helped over 10 million people fight heart valve disease. Adam has been featured by the American Heart Association and Medical News Today.

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