Early to mid-term clinical outcomes of aortic valve repair in patients with bicuspid aortic insufficiency

Abstract

Objective: To examine the early to mid-term clinical outcomes of aortic valve repair in patients with bicuspid aortic insufficiency. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study. The clinical data of 124 patients with BAV insufficiency who underwent aortic valve repair from January 2017 to June 2023 in the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at Fuwai Hospital were analyzed retrospectively. There were 117 males and 7 females with an age of (38.1±12.7) years (range: 14 to 65 years). Depending on whether the aortic sinus was replaced or not, surgical approaches were divided into valve sparing root replacement (reimplantation, remodeling, modified remodeling) and isolated aortic valve repair (annuloplasty, isolated aortic valve leaflet repair). Perioperative and follow-up data were collected. Kaplan-Meier method was used to plot the curves of survival rate, free recurrence rate of massive aortic valve insufficiency and free re-operation rate, and Log-rank test was used for comparison between groups. Results: Among the surgeries, there were 47 cases of reimplantation, 8 cases of remodeling, 8 cases of modified remodeling, 48 cases of aortic annuloplasty (external annuloplasty in 22 cases, CV-0 annuloplasty in 26 cases), and 13 cases of isolated leaflet repair. Leaflet plication was the most used leaflet repair technique, used in 103 patients. The cardiopulmonary bypass time was (133.7±56.9) minutes (range: 48 to 461 minutes), and aortic cross-clamp time was (103.8±47.8) minutes (range: 25 to 306 minutes), with no surgical mortality. All patients underwent outpatient or telephone follow-up. The cumulative follow-up time was 340.3 person-years and the mean follow-up time was (M (IQR)) 34.0 (25.5) months (range: 3 to 76 months). The 5-year survival rate was 98.4%, the 5-year freedom from significant insufficiency rate was 93.4% and the 5-year freedom from aortic valve reoperation rate was 95.6%. The subgroup analysis revealed a significantly better freedom from the significant insufficiency rate in the aortic valve annular reduction group compared to the non-reduction group (P<0.01). Conclusions: Aortic valve repair in patients with bicuspid aortic insufficiency could obtain steady early to mid-term outcomes. Aortic annuloplasty can reduce the risk of recurrent aortic valve insufficiency in patients undergoing aortic repair.