Percutaneous Valve Therapy: Choosing the Appropriate Patients and Outcomes

Surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) is the current gold standard for the treatment of severe symptomatic aortic stenosis (AS), but transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) currently represents a viable alternative to conventional SAVR for patients with AS at high risk of operative mortality. On multivariate analysis it has been shown that female gender is independently associated with better recovery of the left ventricular systolic function after TAVI and that left ventricular hypertrophy reverses more frequently in female patients after SAVR. During follow-up, however, women remain significantly more symptomatic compared with men, mainly because they present with more advanced valve disease at a significantly older age.