Transcatheter aortic valve replacement: New hope for patients with aortic stenosis

I have seen some neat youtube videos demonstrating this procedure. Pretty cool. Probably the wave of the future. Right now, our surgeons feel this is still experimental. Our docs may tend to go for the transapical AVR if they feel the patient cant tolerate the open heart procedure. In my opinion, those patients actually do worse than the ones that get the full open heart. I have seen lots of complications and extended inpatient stays.

That might be because they are more fragile than the typical patient, or part of the PARTNER trial (one of the goals of which is the patient live for a year! after surgery)

The surgeons at my hospital are performing this procedure!!! It blew my mind when I read about it. Super neat.

We've been doing this procedure for a few years now. It's great for those people that cannot tolerate a sternotomy or being on cardiac bypass. I remember the first few, those had poor outcomes. But now it's a routine procedure in the cathlab.