Following years of steady improvements in outcomes, more recent observational data suggest that mortality among TAVI patients may—though only slightly—be increasing, according to an analysis of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons/American College of Cardiology TVT Registry.

The results, which showed a year-over-year rise when death risk was adjusted for patient and procedural characteristics, were published online this week in JAMA Cardiology.

Senior author Suzanne V. Arnold, MD (Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and University of Missouri-Kansas City), told TCTMD that this new study emerged from a prior report using the TVT Registry to look at which patient, procedural, and device factors were driving improvements in TAVI outcomes from 2011 to 2018. In the midst of that work “was when we first kind of noticed this plateauing of outcomes after [around] 2018,” she said.

This time around, the researchers returned to the same database to dig deeper into what happened in the ensuing years, said Arnold. They found, surprisingly, significant increases in both 30-day and in-hospital adjusted mortality.

Read the full TCTMD article: Slight Uptick in Mortality with TAVI in Recent Years: TVT Registry