Lifetime management of aortic valve disease: Aligning surgical and transcatheter armamentarium to set the tone for the present and the future
Michel Pompeu Sá, Basel Ramlawi, Serge Sicouri, Gianluca Torregrossa, Qasim Al Abri, Jörg Kempfert, Markus Kofler, Volkmar Falk, Axel Unbehaun, Karel M. Van Praet
Abstract
Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has already received the green light for high-, intermediate- and low-risk profiles and is an alternative for all patients regardless of age. It is clear that there has been a push towards the use of TAVR in younger and younger patients (<65 years), which has never been formally tested in randomized controlled trials but seems inevitable as TAVR technology makes steady progress. Lifetime management as a concept will set the tone in the field of the structural heart. Some subjects in this scenario arise, including the importance of optimized prosthetic hemodynamics for lifetime care; surgical procedures in the aortic root; management of structural valve degeneration with valve-in-valve procedures (TAVR-in-surgical aortic valve replacement [SAVR] and TAVR-in-TAVR) and redo SAVR; commissural alignment and cusp overlap for TAVR; the rise in the number of surgical procedures for TAVR explantation; and the renewed interest in the Ross procedure. This article reviews all these issues which will become commonplace during heart team meetings and preoperative conversations with patients in the coming years.