There is no question as regards the recommended treatment for symptomatic severe aortic stenosis, seeing as both transcatheter and surgical aortic valve replacement (TAVR and SAVR) have shown to significantly improve prognosis. This is despite the fact that there is still certain ambiguity around its characterization, which looks to define it according to hemodynamic severity…
Low Gradient Aortic Stenosis: Is Invasive Assessment Viable?
There is an important group of patients presenting low flow, low-gradient severe aortic stenosis (defined as mean gradient <40 mmHg). This is why we do dobutamine stress echocardiogram (DSE), to confirm whether we are dealing with truly severe aortic stenosis. However, it might not be well tolerated and a CT angiography will be done to…
Would TAVR Have a Similar Benefit in Patients with Low Flow, Low Gradient, and Preserved Ejection Fraction?
Courtesy of Dr. Carlos Fava. Patients with low-flow low-gradient severe aortic stenosis are at higher risk, but there is a low-flow low-gradient group with preserved ejection fraction. These patients present systolic and diastolic ventricular dysfunction and their progress is different than that of the high-flow high-gradient normal ventricular function group. This study analyzed 1462 patients. Among them,…