Optimising the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation Patient Pathway

Cardiologists at four hospitals in Europe were interviewed on their experience with optimising the transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) patient pathway through implementing the Edwards Benchmark Program (Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, California, USA) in their centres. Insights were received from José Díaz, Head of the Cardiology and Cardiovascular Surgery Department, Hospital Universitario Virgen Del Rocío, Seville, Spain; Franco De Remigis, Medical Director of the Haemodynamic Laboratory, Department of Cardiology, Hospital Giuseppe Mazzini, Teramo, Italy; Rajiv Das, Consultant Interventional Cardiologist, Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK; and Christophe Saint Etienne, Interventional Cardiologist, Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire (CHRU) de Tours, France. Feedback from four European countries illustrates how a patient-focused approach to optimising the TAVI pathway has the potential to improve the quality of care across different healthcare systems, and in hospitals with varying sizes of multidisciplinary heart team. A number of themes emerged. All hospitals reported improvements in patient pathways, including an increase in the number of TAVI cases (e.g., by 25–100%) after implementing the programme; reported reduced length of hospital stay (e.g., 80–90% of patients discharged within 3 days, compared with 5–10 days before the programme), with improved patient satisfaction; and recommended the implementation of a patient pathway optimisation programme, like the Edwards Benchmark Program, in order to address increasing capacity issues, and improve the quality of care. The interviews were conducted between April 2022–April 2023.