Medicare-funded transcatheter aortic valve replacements grew nearly fivefold, to an estimated 98,000 in 2024

Here are both. Across all of Medicare, the estimate runs from 21,000 of these valve replacements — a replacement valve threaded up through a blood vessel rather than placed through an opened chest — in 2015 to 98,000 in 2024, which is about 4.7 times. On the fee-for-service record alone — traditional Medicare, the part that bills Medicare directly, and the only part these counts actually observe — the climb runs 14,000 to 49,000, about 3.5 times.

The difference between them is not rounding. The estimate is built by dividing each state's observed count by that state's fee-for-service share of enrollment, one state at a time, and adding the states up — never one national factor. That share moved over the decade, and the totals show it: 14,000 of 21,000 in 2015 is roughly two thirds, 49,000 of 98,000 in 2024 is about half.

So the larger multiple is doing two jobs at once. It counts an operation being done more often, and it also tracks where Medicare's enrollment went. The smaller one needs no assumption about Medicare Advantage at all, which is what makes it the more careful reading: on the record that is actually observed, the count grew about 3.5 times.

Neither multiple is a comparison. One line is plotted on this page and nothing is plotted against it — the catheter procedure is not charted beside the open-chest operation, so no head-to-head can be read off it. And what is counted is procedures, not devices sold and not bills submitted. Two multiples of one growing count, measured against nothing else.