MB Thermostat service interval

I have no experience with MB thermostats. American and some foreign cars seem to fail in 3 to 5 years except for a coupla Hondas we had that went 8 years and abut 75K miles. I have a recently acquired 96 C280 wtih 44K miles and am wondering if it would be good preventive maintenance to replace the theromstat. I just had the head gasket replaced and am kicking myself for not having it replaced then. Should I replace it now? Thank you for your consideration of this question.

Hilton Smith