I don't want to hijack the thread, but a good friend of mine had 3 open heart surgeries in a 2 year period. The first one was for a valve replacement, about 6 months later he went to hospital via ambulance with heart attack symptoms and it turned out to be an aorta that was very close to bursting (he was LUCKY to live through that), and the last one was almost a year later. He went in for a follow up on the second operation, and the doctor told him the valve they put in was not working properly, so they had to go back in. He is doing OK now. That was about 4 years ago.