Impact of sleep apnea on in-hospital outcomes after transcatheter aortic valve replacement: insight from National Inpatient Sample database 2011–2014

Background: Sleep apnea is associated with worse outcomes following various kinds of surgeries. There is a paucity of data on the association of sleep apnea with clinical outcomes after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). Methods: We used National Inpatient Sample (NIS) data 2011–2014 to identify patients undergoing TAVR. Association between sleep apnea and in-hospital postoperative outcomes were assessed by multivariate logistic regression and 1:1 propensity score matching analyses. Results: Of 42,189 patients who received TAVR, 4,605 patients (10.9%) had sleep apnea. Patients with sleep apnea were more likely to be younger and male with higher prevalences of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, chronic kidney disease, pulmonary hypertension and obesity who less frequently received transapical access than those without sleep apnea. The group with sleep apnea had less bleeding requiring transfusion (8.6% vs. 11.9%, P=0.01) than the counterpart. After adjusting for confounders, the presence of sleep apnea was no longer independently associated with any of the studied outcomes including all-cause mortality (OR 0.95; 95% CI: 0.64–1.42), stroke (OR 1.08; 95% CI: 0.65–1.81), myocardial infarction (OR 0.66; 95% CI: 0.36–1.22), acute respiratory failure (OR 0.94; 95% CI: 0.72–1.23), pneumothorax (OR 0.64; 95% CI: 0.26–1.59), vascular complication (OR 0.91; 95% CI: 0.69–1.22), bleeding requiring transfusion (OR 0.85; 95% CI: 0.65-1.11), acute kidney injury requiring hemodialysis (OR 0.94; 95% CI: 0.53–1.66) and permanent pacemaker implantation (OR 1.12; 95% CI: 0.87–1.43). The length and cost of hospital stay were not affected by sleep apnea, either. Conclusions: With a prevalence of 10.9%, the presence of sleep apnea was not independently associated with postoperative in-hospital outcomes in patients undergoing TAVR in NIS data 2011 to 2014.