US researchers have recently confirmed that bioprosthetic implant made of cow tissue, if used in any heart valve replacement surgery can have the similar survival rates as an open heart surgery.

Also, the team of researchers have marked that this new catheter-inserting technique is less invasive as compared to the conventional surgery and could serve with some most promising results especially for high-risk patients but along with the advantages the technique also carries a big risk of getting stroke and other major heart complications.

The findings are based on the study, which was done on 699 patients with a median age of 84. These patients were randomly assigned to both the surgeries i. e. either TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement) or AVR (open heart surgery to replace the aortic valve). After 30 days of the study, it was found that the catheter insertion of the bioprosthetic has 3.4% death rate as compared to 6.4% for the open heart surgery method. These rates evened out over the time and became similar at one year.

"These results clearly show that TAVR is an excellent alternative to surgical AVR in high-risk patients," said Craig Smith, Co-principal Investigator on the study. He also added “However, the new method carried significantly higher risk of ‘major vascular complications’, at a rate of 11% after TAVR compared to 3.2% in patients who underwent conventional surgery”.