The best way to think about valve replacement is to remember the heart is a pump and has one way valves that allow the heart to eject blood in the forward direction efficiently. Heart valve replacement procedures have historically involved open heart valve procedures with either replacement or valve repair. However in recent years this has become more commonly a catheter based procedure without open heart surgery. The most common valve procedure is the aortic valve replacement. The aortic valve is the valve that is between the left ventricle and the aorta on the left side of the heart and it’s the main valve to make sure blood is ejected out to the rest of the body. The aortic valve is replaced with either a mechanical valve replacement or a tissue type valve replacement. People have often heard of a tissue valve as either being a pig valve or a bovine or cow valve.  The most common tissue valve though is now a bovine type valve which means tissue from a cow heart lining is used to make the valve. The TAVR is a transcutaneous aortic valve replacement and it’s becoming the most popular way to do Is an aortic valve replacement with a catheter based procedure instead of an open heart procedure.  The valve is basically fixed to a balloon and it is advanced from the femoral artery in the left or right groin area or femoral artery up to the aorta with effectively smashing out the old valve and replacing it with a tissue valve.  Popular valve companies are Edward’s life sciences and Medtronic