Subscribe to our newsletter. By DrRich Son, you re never too old to have your aortic stenosis fixed. This was nearly 30 years ago, when open-heart surgery was relatively primitive, when artificial heart valves were oddly designed and prone to failure, and when 80 was truly old . Yet, my professor s admonishment was as true then as it is today. You are never too old to have your aortic stenosis fixed.
People can live quite normally for decades with aortic stenosis until it becomes severe.
Once the symptoms set in, however, those symptoms often progress rapidly, and are relieved only by surgery or by death. The aortic valve opens as the left ventricle begins to pump, thus allowing the blood to flow out of the heart. In a person with aortic stenosis, the aortic valve becomes diseased in such a way that it no longer opens completely. Since the opening between the ventricle and the aorta is now narrower than it is supposed to be, in order to eject an adequate amount of blood the left ventricle has to work much harder than normal. Why the heart fails.