Okay Jim........Let's put it in another context. Let's make it about YOU. Here is your scenario:
You have had several heart surgeries, including open heart to do a quad by-pass. An ablative surgery also to aid in an arrhythmia. Additionally, you have hypertension and worst of all you have an aortic dissection which is a type of aneurysm. In this case, one of the three walls of the aorta has split away for the entire length of the aorta from just below the arch to the femoral arterial branch. Now you find that your mitral valve is severely malfunctioning and must be either repaired or replaced.
Now you can go on living, no time guarantees, but with a pretty limited quality of life. The option for surgery to repair or replace the valve is not really good because you have already had your chest cracked once but even worse, that aorta is a problem for ANY surgery. It's an even bigger problem for heart surgery becasue the heart lung machine reverses the flow in it and it could let go anytime during the surgery or even in post op. Of course it could also rupture anytime as well, but it's pretty stable and the surgery will put it under extreme pressure. There are also a lot of other problems associated with any heart surgery such as possible brain/idney/liver damage and that type of thing.
Half a dozen quality heart surgeons turn you down and say they would only attempt it as a last resort. Then you encounter another noted heart surgeon who lays out all the risks aftere doing lots of tests and tells you he has a new method that might work, but your odds are still less than 50-50. If you have the surgery, the only real improvement will be in your quality of life, no extra time guarantees. Even then though, you can't expect to be a teenager again...but a better life than what you are having. Now it's time to decide.