Jumping Jack Valve

I am sorry that I have to bother or bore you with The Rolling Stones yet again, but sometimes, as John Lennon from that other band said, “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans,” and coincidences simply coincide. One day you are down in Miami Beach with the mates, cozily pampered in your favorite luxury retreat, and building sand castles with the youngest one and his ballerina mother. Everybody is happy and relaxed, preparing for the next tour leg, supposed to start on Easter Saturday at the aptly named Hard Rock Stadium over in Miami Gardens. Even the Web site for the fan wish list has been set-up. The next day you have a quick check with the doctors and all of a sudden they declare you unfit for work. There's a heart murmur and, yes, you did feel some fatigue lately, and then the whole machinery unwinds.

On March 30 you have to tell the fans that you are “devastated for having to postpone the tour.” A murmur about health issues begins to spread, soon becoming more precise, focusing on a supposed heart valve condition requiring an operation. Then the notorious New York cardiac surgeon and television host Mehmet Oz explains to the world the operation Mick Jagger will have to undergo: Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) as the Americans wrongly call it. His short, empathic spot is followed by a neat and informative animation showing the details of the most prominent product and its deployment via the groin.

The team gets busy in New York and on April 5th the patient is already “feeling much better now and on the mend” – which is illustrated another six days later by a picture showing him very relaxed, wearing one of those strange baseball caps in front of a blooming bush. Another week later he attends a gala event at the Lincoln Center, pretty much looking as if nothing had happened.

So a famous celebrity underwent a Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI), as the rest of the world correctly calls it, indirectly giving this treatment modality a tremendous publicity boost at least in medical circles. Thinking along the guidelines, the patient is 75 years of age and, it can be safely assumed, has a low procedural risk profile. This emphasizes the patient's preferences in the Heart Team discussion. It is probably fair to speculate that the rapid recuperation time, as well as an unharmed thorax were very strong and valid arguments for the choice of treatment. After all, the fans are waiting out there, and rescheduling the whole 17-gig stadium tour is bad enough already with the American Football season starting September 5th. Scars and severed bones may come in handy for the image of a Terminator, but not necessarily for that of somebody who has been attributed with a lithe and lissom physique which is the envy of fellow men many years his junior and his major asset for making lots of money. As always with the TAVI prosthesis, long-term durability may become an issue, but perhaps only for the next-but-one tour. In the meantime it will be very thrilling to see how that ingenious device will behave during the singer's usual vigorous movements of Jumping Jack Flash. We all hope it is a good fit, that Wild Horses won't drag it away, and that it will stay where it is supposed to be. At long last the cardiac community does have one TAVI short-term follow-up observation which is really of interest.