Patients who have a stiff aortic valve replaced using a catheter procedure have better outcomes after five years than similar patients who undergo a catheter procedure that simply uses a small balloon to open the valves leaflets. Those are the findings of a Cleveland Clinic study published recently in The Lancet.Led by Samir Kapadia, MD, director of the Sones Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories at Cleveland Clinic, the study further supports the use of a promising new procedure called transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). Its an option for patients who are too frail for open heart surgery.This trial is the first-and will probably be the only-randomized aortic stenosis trial that includes a group of patients not treated with aortic valve replacement, since these results will make it unethical to treat severe stenosis patients with medical therapy alone, Dr. Kapadia says.
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