Hi OP, my dad had this op earlier this year, at the age of 74. He had always been very fit and healthy before this, but in the last few years he has also been diagnosed with Parkinson's, and I think this may have slowed down his recovery a little.
The op itself was fine. He was in hospital for eight days. We saw him on the same day as the op, he was still asleep and on a ventilator but looked well, and we felt relieved to have seen that he was ok. He was awake the next day at lunchtime when we went in, and was lying down, but feeling ok, just a little weak. They had him sitting up in the evening, and he looked uncomfortable. Each day we saw him, he was getting a bit better and doing a bit more for himself.
He was in intensive care for two days, I think, but the care there was excellent. He skipped the high dependency ward and went straight to the cardiac ward, where we felt the care was not so good, and we did worry a bit. After a few days, he developed an atrial flutter, and they could not regulate his heart, so he had to have a light anaesthetic and a quick procedure, (a shock I think) to reset the rhythm and luckily that worked.
He came home after a few more days and has been improving ever since. He had a load of different medications to take, which my parents found a bit baffling, they were all at different times, and some tablets were reducing day by day, so I made them a chart of what he needed to take each day at specific times. I don't want to make out that my parents couldn't do this themselves, my father was in the medical profession himself! At the time though, he was weak and not up to it, and my mother was quite stressed and needed a fair amount of support.
Although he has recovered well, it was slow going. He got quite down about the recovery, as I think he wanted to be up and about and outside quite quickly. He lost his appetite in hospital, which is not like him! We were told that this was quite common, the patients tend to underestimate how long it will take to recover.
It's now about seven months on, and he is much better and not so breathless. However, he seems to have aged a fair bit, which I think is due more to the Parkinson's.
Sorry this has turned out to be very long. I hope your dad decides to go ahead with it, and that it goes well. I know of someone who had it done and ran a marathon a year later! The consultant told my dad bluntly that he had to have the op or he would not live much longer. He expects the valve to last for about fifteen years, and said that he would then replace it again for him, so I think the prognosis is generally very good.