[Demographic evolution of patients with a surgical aortic valvular replacement in the era of percutaneous...

Percutaneous aortic valve replacement has been performed in daily practice for less than 10 years. This technique was until recently reserved for patients with very high surgical risk. There is little data in the literature documenting the impact of this percutaneous technique on the patient population continuing to benefit from a surgical replacement of the aortic valve. We studied the characteristics of these patients immediately before and after the introduction of the percutaneous technique in the CHU Brugmann.

Two separate cohorts of patients were retrospectively studied: one before the percutaneous era between 2005 and 2010 and the other after introduction of the percutaneous technique in our daily practice between 2010 and 2015. Demographic, intraoperative, mortality and postoperative morbidity indices were compared.

The number of surgical replacements of the aortic valve was 194 before and 132 after introduction of the percutaneous technique. The demographic, operative characteristics and postoperative morbidity and mortality of the patients remained the same between the two cohorts. Only the incidence of pulmonary arterial hypertension (12.1 vs 25 %, p = 0.015) and recent myocardial infarction (0 vs 3 %, p = 0.003) were higher in the second cohort.

Replacement of the aortic valve percutaneously did not significantly change the demographic characteristics and postoperative morbidity and mortality of patients candidate for surgical replacement of the aortic valve. Nevertheless, after its introduction, the number of surgical replacements dropped considerably in our center.