Harvesting hay has gone from a labor-intensive practice of using sickles and wooden forks to balers that compress hay into round and square bales.

An 11-year-old boy recently became the first person in the world to have an artificial heart valve replaced with a living donor heart valve. Preston Porter, who has lived for the past near-decade with ...

Valves allow the flow of blood in one direction in the heart and thus ensure smooth flow of blood cells and fluid called plasma.

Today patients are fitted with either artificial valves, meaning they have to take anti-clotting medication for life, or biological ones made of pig, cow or donated human tissue, which usually ...

Medically reviewed by Jeffrey S. Lander, MDMedically reviewed by Jeffrey S. Lander, MD Heart valves keep blood flowing in the right direction between the heart's four chambers. If a valve, such as the ...

Biological valves don’t last as long as mechanical valves Mechanical valves are man-made. If you receive a mechanical valve, you will need to take blood-thinning medicine for the rest of your life.

But that was 13 years ago and, unfortunately, artificial valves don’t last forever. By this time last year, the then-73-year-old’s “new” valve was narrowing and leaking.

Replacement valves may be mechanical or biological, which means they use tissue from an animal, such as a pig or cow, or from human tissue.