Annals Animated (August 2024)

In recent societal guidelines, the management of aortic stenosis has evolved to stratification by age. In this report-the 2024 Richard E. Clark Memorial Paper for Adult Cardiac Surgery-the authors evaluated age-stratified surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) trends and outcomes in patients with bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) or tricuspid aortic valve (TAV) from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Adult Cardiac Surgery Database. In total, more than 200,000 SAVR patients from 1,200+ participating hospitals met the inclusion criteria. The authors found that SAVR volume in the transcatheter era has decreased substantially, particularly for patients ≥80 years old and for those with TAV. Younger patients with BAV have better than expected outcomes, which should be carefully considered during shared decision-making in the treatment of aortic stenosis. Overall, the authors conclude that SAVR should remain the preferred therapy in this population.
Read the accompanying article in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery: www.annalsthor...