VIDEO: TAVR system shows strong results across risk scale

Chicago — In this video, Michael Reardon, MD, specialist in cardiac surgery from the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center, discusses a study presented at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session examining 3-year outcomes of a self-expandable TAVR system (CoreValve, Medtronic) in comparison to surgery in a high-risk patient group.

Reardon said that at 1 and 2 years, CoreValve was superior to surgery. He said that while superiority was lost at 3 years, there was still a delta in favor of TAVR.

“What this tells me is that these TAVR valves continue to do a really good job of relieving aortic stress and gives me real hope that this is going to have a long-term effect,” Reardon said.

Additionally, he discusses the results of a subgroup analysis of the same trial related to patients with a Society of Thoracic Surgeons Predicted Risk of Mortality (STS PROM) score of 7 or less.

In those patients, Reardon and colleagues discovered that at 1 and 2 years, they had a superior survival to surgery. Reardon said this finding was surprising because the invasiveness of surgery is not expected to be a major factor in lower-risk patients.

He concluded that both studies have major implications because “not only [is TAVR] doing as well as surgery, [it is] superior [to] surgery even as [it moves] down the risk scale.”