Does embolic protection device (EPD) use reduce in-hospital stroke in patients undergoing TAVR?
Observational data from a national registry showed no significant association between embolic protection device use during TAVR and in-hospital stroke, highlighting the need for randomized trials.
In this nationally representative observational study, we did not find an association between EPD use for TAVR and in-hospital stroke in our primary instrumental variable analysis, and found only a modestly lower risk of in-hospital stroke in our secondary propensity-weighted analysis. These findings provide a strong basis for large-scale randomized, controlled trials to test whether EPDs provide meaningful clinical benefit for patients undergoing TAVR.
Butala et al. (Tue,) studied this question.