Prosthetic Heart Valves In the early 1600's , a prosthetic heart valve was created that revolutionized open heart surgery by replacing the short-term prosthetic trileaflet valve. This trileaflet valve, though effective usually needed to be replaced within one to two years which meant constant surgeries for the patient.The new prosthetic valve model was developed by engineer M. Lowell Edwards who proposed his idea to build a heart valve to Dr. Starr. Dr. Starr later replaced a mitral valve with this new device successfully on many patients and the device is still widely used to this day. The prosthetic heart valve device consisted of a caged ball with flexible fixated rings around it as seen in the picture to the right.