Hi "JM",
The article says that, in this study of patients who had originally received biological replacement mitral valves and who needed repeat surgery because those valves had failed, there was essentially no difference in outcome between those whose second surgery was traditional and those who had a transcatheter mitral valve replacement the second time. This is especially interesting because the transcatheter group was, on average, older and sicker to start with than the traditional surgery group.
I hadn't realized that the transcatheter procedure was working so well for mitral valves, though I know it's been around for quite a while for aortic valves.
