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For patients with symptomatic severe aortic stenosis who are at high risk for surgical complications, both transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) and surgical replacement dramatically improve health status within 1 year, an analysis of the PARTNER trial showed.
By 1 year, the gains seen in each group were similar, although in the shorter term TAVI performed using the transfemoral approach -- but not the transapical approach -- led to more rapid improvement compared with surgery, according to David Cohen, MD, of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., and colleagues.
The short-term benefits with transfemoral TAVI "may be important from the patient's perspective," the researchers wrote online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
