Gender-specific Temporal Trends in Survival in Patients With Severe Aortic Stenosis Undergoing Transfemoral Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation.

Severe aortic stenosis (AS) is the commonest form of valvular abnormality in the developed world and accounts for more than 40% of patients with native valvular disease with an approximately equal prevalence in males and females.

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is now widely practiced with treatment of over 300,000 patients worldwide. Many centres now regularly implant devices in patients for whom conventional aortic valve replacement (AVR) is deemed high or intermediate risk. Several studies have shown that females have an apparent better outcome with TAVI than males.

There are numerous possible reasons as to the apparent favourable benefit of TAVI in women including: having both lower rates of moderate / severe aortic regurgitation and peri-procedural mortality, lower rates of bleeding and renal failure, better patient prosthesis match and recovery of left ventricular function with more favourable left ventricular remodelling.

Rationale for proposal:

Newer devices have reduced the introducer French size and are hence associated with reduced rates of vascular and bleeding complications. This may translate to an even higher survival benefit in female versus male patients with severe aortic stenosis treated with transfemoral TAVI. In the current study we will aim to investigate gender temporal survival trends, and complications including stroke and heart attack in aortic stenosis patients treated with current versus older generation transcatheter valves. We have already been successful in obtaining the periprocedural data from NICOR and and mortality data will be linked from NHS digital.