Document resource
The prevalence of severe aortic stenosis (AS) is increasing globally, mainly due to ageing of populations and concomitant with this rise, deaths related to severe AS are also increasing.1 2 The definitive treatment for severe AS is aortic valve replacement (AVR) and traditionally surgical AVR (SAVR) using open-heart methods was the main method available with excellent results. Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), also known as transcatheter aortic valve replacement, developed by Cribier et al and first carried out in 2002, is a method to treat AS with a new valve usually implanted by a percutaneous route without the need for open-heart surgery.3 Over the last two decades, TAVI has advanced to show beneficial results in higher surgical risk patients compared with SAVR.3 Comparisons of TAVI and SAVR in low-to-medium surgical risk patients have generated more debate, with results from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) showing apparently more favourable results for TAVI on mortality up to 1 year with recognised higher rates of stroke and aortic valve regurgitation in the TAVI group compared with SAVR.4 We appraise a new pooled meta-analysis of published data from TAVI versus SAVR trials in low-to-medium surgical risk patients with follow-up to 5 years by Marin-Cuartas et al.5