The Outcomes of Pulmonary Hypertension Patients With Severe Aortic Stenosis Who Underwent Surgical Aortic Valve Replacement or Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation

Abstract

The outcomes for patients who undergo transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) and surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) with pulmonary hypertension (PH) is not well understood. We sought to evaluate the outcomes of patients with PH who underwent TAVI compared with SAVR. We identified patients who were diagnosed with PH and underwent TAVI SAVR for aortic valve stenosis in the National Inpatient Sample database who were admitted from 2011 to 2014. Propensity score matching was used to generate 2 matched cohorts for TAVI and SAVR and outcomes were compared using logistic regressions. A total of 36,786 patients were diagnosed with PH and had an intervention for aortic valve stenosis. Twenty six percent underwent TAVI (n = 9,560) and 74% underwent SAVR (n = 27,225). Patients in the TAVI group were older (81.0 vs 68.5, p <0.001) had more women (53.2% vs 45.4%) and less African-American patients (4.6% vs 8.3%; p <0.001 for both). Although both groups had comparable co-morbidities, the TAVI group had higher prevalence of congestive heart failure, chronic pulmonary disease, renal failure, peripheral vascular disease, coronary artery disease, and previous stroke compared with the SAVR group (p ≤0.002). After propensity-score-matching, patients with PH had no statistically significant difference in in-hospital mortality between for TAVI or SAVR procedures (5.6% vs 4.6%, odds ratio [OR] 1.23, confidence interval [CI] 0.92 to 1.66, p = 0.165). However, TAVI patients were less likely to have cardiac complications (15.4% vs 19.9%, OR 0.73, CI 0.61 to 0.87, p = 0.001) and respiratory complications (12.4% vs 25.1%, OR 0.42, CI 0.35 to 0.51, p <0.001). In conclusion, whereas patient with PH who underwent TAVI and SAVR had similar in-hospital mortality, TAVI was associated with lower cardiac, respiratory and bleeding complications compared with SAVR.