Transcatheter versus surgical aortic valve replacement in patients with aortic regurgitation: A propensity-matched analysis

This study aimed to analyze in-hospital and early-to-interim outcomes of pure aortic regurgitation (AR) using transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) vs. surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR). Background: Few studies have discussed and compared the safety and short-term prognosis of TAVR and SAVR in pure AR patients. As such, we looked to the National Readmissions Database (NRD) for records between 2016 and 2019 in order to identify patients diagnosed with pure AR who underwent SAVR or TAVR. We used the propensity score matching to minimize disparities between two groups. We included 23,276 pure AR patients: 1983 (8.5%) who underwent TAVR and 21,293 (91.5%) who underwent SAVR. We found 1820 matched pairs using propensity score matching. In the matching cohort, TAVR was associated with a low risk of in-hospital mortality. Although TAVR had lower incidences of 30-day all-cause readmission (hazard ratio (HR):0.73, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.61-0.87; P < 0.01) and 6-month all-cause readmission (HR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.67-0.97; P = 0.03), while TAVR had high incidences of 30-day permanent pacemaker implantation incidence (HR: 3.54, 95% CI: 1.62-7.74; P < 0.01) and 6-month permanent pace-maker implantation incidence (HR: 4.12, 95% CI: 1.17-14.4; P = 0.03). In conclusion, TAVR and SAVR had similar risks of hospital death and lower rates of 30-day and 6-month all-cause and cardiovascular readmission. But TAVR had a higher risk of permanent pacemaker implantation than SAVR in AR patients, suggesting that TAVR can be performed safely in pure AR patients.