[OminousWeapons]

A surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) for example will cost ~50K I believe? It will be covered by insurance if it is necessary.

There are also less invasive forms of valve replacement (transcatheter / percutaneous) which involve collapsing a synthetic valve around a balloon at the end of a catheter, inserting the assembly into a femoral artery, guiding the valve into the heart and into the open damaged valve, and then inflating the balloon and deploying the new valve inside of the damaged old valve. In SAVR the old valve is removed and the new one is sewn in. In transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), the old valve is held open by the new valve.

[sokoloff]

Is anyone having an aortic valve replacement that isn’t necessary?!

[MikeTheGreat]

Er, no, although that was a funny way for the parent to phrase it.

It might be more accurate to phrase it as "depending on your insurance, your insurance may pay for it if it's covered AND you _meet_the_criteria_ for the procedure."

For example: You may run into a situation where your doctor says "You know, it would be good to replace this now" and the insurance company says "Thank you for your professional opinion; our table says that we're not replacing it until criteria X is also satisfied"