Five-Year Clinical and Echocardiographic Outcomes From the NOTION Randomized Clinical Trial in Patients at Lower...

The NOTION trial (Nordic Aortic Valve Intervention) was designed to compare transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) with surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in patients ≥70 years old with isolated severe aortic valve stenosis. Clinical and echocardiographic outcomes are presented after 5 years.

Patients were enrolled at 3 Nordic centers and randomized 1:1 to TAVR using the self-expanding CoreValve prosthesis (n=145) or SAVR using any stented bioprostheses (n=135). The primary composite outcome was the rate of all-cause mortality, stroke, or myocardial infarction at 1 year defined according to Valve Academic Research Consortium-2 criteria.

Baseline characteristics were similar. The mean age was 79.1±4.8 years and mean Society of Thoracic Surgeons Predicted Risk of Mortality score was 3.0%±1.7%. After 5 years, there were no differences between TAVR and SAVR in the composite outcome (Kaplan-Meier estimates 38.0% versus 36.3%, log-rank test P=0.86) or any of its components. TAVR patients had larger prosthetic valve area (1.7 cm² versus 1.2 cm², P<0.001) with a lower mean transprosthetic gradient (8.2 mm Hg versus 13.7 mm Hg, P<0.001), both unchanged over time. More TAVR patients had moderate/severe total aortic regurgitation (8.2% versus 0.0%, P<0.001) and a new pacemaker (43.7% versus 8.7%, P<0.001). Four patients had prosthetic reintervention and no difference was found for functional outcomes.

These are currently the longest follow-up data comparing TAVR and SAVR in lower risk patients, demonstrating no statistical difference for major clinical outcomes 5 years after TAVR with a self-expanding prosthesis compared to SAVR. Higher rates of prosthetic regurgitation and pacemaker implantation were seen after TAVR.

URL: https://clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT01057173.