Conventional aortic valve replacement versus transcatheter aortic valve implantation: professional requirements for...

At present, the recommendation grade of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) for aortic valve stenosis (AVS) has increased in many guidelines. Establishing an optimized TAVI nurse team is essential for improving surgical quality and outcomes. We compared the professional requirements for nurses in two surgical approaches for aortic stenosis and the different roles of nurses in the surgical teams, with an attempt to further improve the training programs for specialized nurses.

The required professional knowledge and the role of nursing staff during TAVI or AVR (Conventional aortic valve replacement) were analyzed. These included knowledge on the pathophysiology of aortic stenosis, advantages and disadvantages of different heart valves, extracorporeal circulation, nursing cooperation during valve replacement, conventional surgical instruments and interventional consumables, surgical complications, radiation protection, operation of pacemakers, theory and operation of electric defibrillation. And the surgical team members and their roles, and doctor-patient satisfaction were also compared.

TAVI had higher requirements for the basic knowledge of the pathophysiology of aortic stenosis, advantages and disadvantages of different heart valves, extracorporeal circulation and theory and operation of electric defibrillation. And the clinical professional knowledge of conventional surgical instruments and interventional consumables, surgical complications, radiation protection, nursing cooperation, operation of pacemakers were also higher required in TAVI. Doctor-patient overall satisfaction were higher in TAVI than AVR (95.8% vs. 84.4%, 97.5% vs. 92.7%).

The professional requirements for nurses differs between TAVI and AVR. Comprehensive programs should be designed to develop the basic knowledge and professional training for future cardiac operation.