As transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) gains increasing acceptance, cardiologists and surgeons are exploring additional patient populations who may benefit from the procedure. A new paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology provides the first look at the use of TAVI in the small but important group of patients with pure, severe native aortic valve regurgitation (NAVR) who do not have aortic stenosis.
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The authors acknowledge that TAVI will likely be used sparingly in the NAVR population:
…although these results are encouraging for those patients who are truly ineligible for surgery, surgical valve replacement remains the gold standard for those who can undergo it, even at high risk. Furthermore, there is an increasing number of patients in whom the native aortic valve can be preserved during surgery.
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