January 25, 2021
Even in asymptomatic patients with aortic stenosis (AS) and minimal signs of cardiac damage, early treatment with surgery provides a long-term survival benefit over conservative management, a new analysis of the RECOVERY trial shows.
Researchers assessing the prognostic value of a disease classification tool which relies on the degree of damage to stage AS found much lower rates of CV or all-cause death at 8 years for patients in the lower stages compared with higher stages. But surgery across all disease categories still offered benefits over conservative management, they said.
“Because the risk-benefit ratio of early elective AVR over conservative management in asymptomatic AS may differ according to stages of cardiac damage, further prospective studies will be necessary to facilitate the identification of patients that may benefit from early intervention,” write Sung-Ji Park, MD, PhD (Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea), and colleagues in a research letter
January 08, 2021
Sending home select patients who have had elective, minimalist TAVI with no complications the same day as their procedure is safe and feasible, according to an analysis of one high-volume center’s protocol, which was put in place when COVID-19 was taking hold.
“When the pandemic hit, amidst the concern and planning of what to do, our heart team started a conversation almost immediately about how can we brainstorm ways to move forward through the pandemic and not restrict access to care for our patients specifically with aortic stenosis,” senior author Chandan M. Devireddy MD, MBA (Emory University Hospital Midtown, Atlanta, GA), told TCTMD.