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Aortic Stenosis & Valve Replacement
Heart & Blood Health | Last Active: Jul 8 6:34am | Replies (151)Comment receiving replies
That's an interesting thought I never considered and it opens a can of worms in my mind. Would like to have a scientific answer to that, which I can't do. Just applying some basic deduction from my very limited understanding, I thought of some further questions. My wife first wondered "Do cows get Covid". As I understand tissue valves, I believe the tissue used is made "inert" so it's not recognized as a foreign body that our immune system can attack. So my question would be, "Can bacterial or viral flora, which is commonly in our bodies on a daily basis, recognize valve tissue as infectable? Bacteria and virus can't infect a table top.
So I have more questions for my valve doc....
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I am not a doctor or a biologist, so just sharing this as an individual patient. I’m not sure this says anything about Covid outcomes, but heart valves can get infected in other ways, and my understanding is that the infections are hard to treat because antibiotics can’t do their work as effectively as they can for your own native tissues that have blood flow/vascularity/circulation. I was told to be careful about dental work and subcutaneous skin infections because, if they result in an infection in the heart, an operation might be required to deal with it. For this reason, many of us take antibiotic prophylaxis for certain dental procedures. And my PCP is aggressive about treating anything that looks like a skin infection. Back to the main topic, I would love to know anything more about Covid and bio-prosthetic heart valves, so please do share if you learn anything more. I’m guessing there might not be a lot of organized data on this, but my PCP is definitely cautious about it.