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In patients undergoing aortic-valve or mitral-valve replacement, either a mechanical or biologic prosthesis is used. Biologic prostheses have been increasingly favored despite limited evidence supporting this practice.

We compared long-term mortality and rates of reoperation, stroke, and bleeding between inverse-probability-weighted cohorts of patients who underwent primary aortic-valve replacement or mitral-valve replacement with a mechanical or biologic prosthesis in California in the period from 1996 through 2013. Patients were stratified into different age groups on the basis of valve position (aortic vs. mitral valve).

From 1996 through 2013, the use of biologic prostheses increased substantially for aortic-valve and mitral-valve replacement, from 11.5% to 51.6% for aortic-valve replacement and from 16.8% to 53.7% for mitral-valve replacement. Among patients who underwent …