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Calcified Aortic Heart Valves: Inside Dr. Doolabh's Operating Room!

Written By: Adam Pick, Patient Advocate, Author & Website Founder
Published: November 4, 2024

Together, our patient community has a learned a lot about calcified aortic heart valves over the years. As you may know, a calcified heart valve can lead to severe aortic stenosis which is an under-diagnosed and life-threatening form of heart disease. That said, one of the big questions I continue to get from patients is, "What does a calcified aortic valve look like?"

Thanks to Dr. Neelan Doolabh, a leading minimally-invasive heart valve surgeon, here are five pictures taken during recent aortic valve replacement surgeries performed by Dr. Doolabh. For example, that is a tri-leaflet aortic valve that has severe calcification all over the leaflets.

Calcified Aortic Heart Valves with Dr. Neelan Doolabh

Here is a close-up of another calcified aortic valve that Dr. Doolabh had to replace.

Holy Moly! Here is an extremely calcified aortic valve. You can see all the calcium embedded within the leaflet tissue has essentially broken apart as Dr. Doolabh removed the defective heart valve.

Dr. Doolabh also sent us a calcified bicuspid aortic valve. As you are probably aware, up to 2% of the population has a bicuspid aortic valve which is a congenital heart defect.

Calcified Bicuspid Aortic Valve Leaflets (Stenosis)

Many Thanks Dr. Neelan Doolabh!

On behalf of our patient community, thanks so much to Dr. Neelan Doolabh for taking such great care of our patients with calcified aortic valves.

We really appreciate your support of our educational initiatives!

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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