-87-year-old John Grigsby's doctor put him in the top predicament 2 years ago.
-He said I give you 3 to 6 months of the outside to live, more likely 3 months.
-He needed a new aortic valve, but wasn't a good candidate for traditional open-heart surgery.
-You had the triple bypass.
You had stents put in.
You've got diabetes.
You're recovering from congestive heart failure.
-This is daughter Gloria.
-But that laundry list combined with his age
made him the perfect candidate for Edwards Lifesciences' trial SAPIEN valve that doesn't require any surgery.
-Give me any chance I can, I enjoy life.
I wanna keep living.
-It's mounted inside this metal frame, and this metal frame is able to be crushed or what we call crimped and put on a balloon catheter, which is a small tube and tread it up from an artery in the leg or put through the tip of the heart.
-Dr.
Michael Mack is the chief of cardiac surgery for the Baylor Healthcare System in Dallas.
He was also one of 8 doctors overseeing the FDA
trials for the SAPIEN.
-This has opened up a whole new area of treatment with patients with a fatal and lethal disease that previously were never referred for surgery.
-Grigsby received his new valve in January 2010 and was up and walking that same day.
-To be able to replace somebody's heart valve without doing an operation to cut them open even 15 years ago, I couldn't have imagined that happening.
-And now, almost 2 years later, he still feels great.
-There's no problem.
So, I'm thrilled.
It saved my life.
-And now that the valve is FDA-approved, it has the chance to save someone else's life too.
In San Francisco, I'm Kara Tsuboi, CNET.com for CBS News.
