Regarding the sound/noise of mechanical valves, despite having tinnitus I have very sensitive hearing (I had to remove a wall clock from my bedroom which was like 20 feet away from my bed, because the "click" it made with the second hand was annoying me).
And when I was in the hospital recovering from my open heart surgery there was a weird light that was part of the electrical socket on the wall across from the foot of my bed which made a strange noise every time it blinked (every couple minutes) which virtually no one could hear but me (but it kept waking me up) - and I had to complain to the nurses about it who thought I was crazy (besides the point) with end result of something like a maintenance person coming in and disabling or changing the outlet (or something I can't remember exactly).
But my mechanical aortic valve? I can't hear it. Not a peep. Nor can anyone else. Don't know what factors are involved to make mine inaudible (without a stethoscope) vs other folks that say they can hear theirs (body mass, bone density, height, curly vs straight vs no hair, being left vs right handed, or anything imaginable under the sun) but point is YMMV either way so I wouldn't put too much stock into that aspect of it. Besides maybe by the time you need one they'll have a guaranteed noiseless model available.
But seriously I wonder if this is any kind of thing that the Drs (or the valve makers) know about, are they aware of some being louder than others, are there installation placement locations to make them less noisy, or what?
