Objective: The aim of this study was to model the short term and 2-year overall survival (OS) for intermediate-risk and low-risk patients with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis (AS) undergoing timely or delayed transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) during the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Methods: We developed a decision analysis model to evaluate 2 treatment strategies for both low-risk and intermediate-risk patients with AS during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic.
Results: Prompt TAVR resulted in improved 2-year OS compared with delayed intervention for intermediate-risk patients (0.81 vs 0.67) and low-risk patients (0.95 vs 0.85), owing to the risk of death or the need for urgent/emergent TAVR in the waiting period. However, if the probability of acquiring COVID-19 novel coronavirus is >55% (intermediate-risk patients) or 47% (low-risk patients), delayed TAVR is favored over prompt intervention (0.66 vs 0.67 for intermediate risk; 0.84 vs 0.85 for low risk).
Conclusions: Prompt transcatheter aortic valve replacement for both intermediate-risk and low-risk patients with symptomatic severe AS results in improved 2-year survival when local healthcare system resources are not significantly constrained by the COVID-19.
Keywords: ACC, American College of Cardiology; AS, aortic stenosis; AVR, aortic valve replacement; COVID-19; COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019; OS, overall survival; TAVR, transcatheter aortic valve replacement; aortic stenosis; transcatheter aortic valve replacement.
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery.