Does percutaneous paravalvular leak closure improve symptoms and reduce regurgitation in patients with paravalvular leak?
Percutaneous paravalvular leak closure is a safe and effective alternative to redo-surgery, offering high procedural success and significant symptomatic improvement.
Background: Transcatheter paravalvular leak (PVL) closure in recent times has emerged as a safe and effective alternate to redo-surgical repair. We sought to examine the clinical efficacy and safety of percutaneous PVL closure at our center. Methods and Results: A retrospective study from August 2012 to December 2019 of 19 patients who underwent 21 procedures for PVL closure. The mean age was 49.25 ± 14.72 years. The target valve was mitral in 11 (57%) and aortic in 7 (36%) cases. One (5%) patient had prosthetic valve in left atrioventricular valve with congenitally corrected transposition of great arteries. Majority of the cohort presented with heart failure without hemolysis (89%), with most of them being in NYHA functional class III (57%) or class IV (21%). A procedural success of 85% was achieved. Post procedure severity of regurgitation reduced from severe in thirteen patients and moderate in six patients to moderate in two patients and mild in fourteen patients. Symptomatic improvement was observed in all cases who had successful closure with NYHA function class improving from 3 ± 0.64 to 1.6 ± 0.94. The mean follow-up duration was 21 ± 13 months (median 24 months). There was one (4.7%) mortality with cumulative survival from all-cause mortality of 95%. Conclusion: The results of percutaneous PVL closure appear encouraging in our series with modest number of patients and offers a promising alternative to redo-surgery in this high-risk cohort.
Garg et al. (Thu,) studied this question.