Long-term mortality and complications of Björk-Shiley spherical-disc valves--a life table analysis.

Bj6rk-Shiley Spherical-Disc Valves have been one of the most commonly used mechanical valves in the past 20 years. The long-term mortality and complications of these valves is therefore of great interest to the life insurance medical director. This paper presents an unusually complete set of data and additional follow-up of two earlier separate articles on long-term follow-up of aortic and mitral valve replacements which were reported in the 1990 Medical Risks (see Abstracts No. 669 and No. 672). From the mortality abstract perspective the article is excellent in allowing comparison of results by the life table method with the results from the survival curves which are on good-sized graphs.