Patient selection for TAVI 2015 - TAVI in low-risk patients: fact or fiction?

For decades, surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) has been the standard treatment for severe aortic stenosis (AS). With the clinical introduction of the concept of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), a rapid development took place and, based on the results of landmark randomised controlled trials, within a few years TAVI became first-line therapy for inoperable patients with severe AS and an alternative to SAVR in operable high-risk patients. Indeed, data from a recent randomised controlled trial suggest that TAVI is superior to SAVR in higher-risk patients with AS. New TAVI devices have been developed to address current limitations, to optimise results further and to minimise complications. First results using these second-generation valves are promising. However, no data from randomised controlled trials assessing TAVI in younger, low-risk patients are yet available. While we await the results of trials addressing these issues (e.g., SURTAVI [NCT01586910] and PARTNER II [NCT01314313]), recent data from TAVI registries suggest that treatment of low-risk patients is already fact and no longer fiction.