Outcomes of transcatheter aortic valve replacement without predilation of the aortic valve: Insights from 1544 patients included in the SOURCE 3 registry

Aims: To investigate the impact of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) without preliminary balloon aortic valvuloplasty (pre-BAV) on periprocedural outcomes in a large, real-world registry.

Methods and results: The SOURCE 3 registry was an observational, multi-center, single-arm study of patients with severe, symptomatic aortic stenosis at high surgical risk treated with the SAPIEN 3 transcatheter heart valve (THV). Procedural and 30-day outcomes were compared between two groups of 772 patients each (retrospectively matched) with or without pre-BAV. All baseline clinical, echocardiographic, and anatomical valve characteristics were comparable between groups except for Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) score, which was lower in the direct TAVR group (6.0 ± 5.9 vs 7.8 ± 8.3; p = 0.003). In the direct TAVR group, there were less post-dilatations (8.1% vs. 13.1%, p = 0.002), shorter procedural time (70.9 ± 39.8 min vs 73.0 ± 32.2 min, p = 0.033) and fluoroscopy time (13.4 ± 7.0 min vs 14.9 ± 7.4 min, p < 0.001). Other procedural outcomes and echocardiographic variables at 30 days did not differ significantly between the two groups: safety endpoint (10.4% with pre-BAV vs 13.5% with direct TAVR, p = 0.059), mortality (2.1% vs 2.3%, p = 0.730), disabling strokes (0.4% vs 0.5%, p = 0.704), and moderate to severe paravalvular leak (PVL) (3.2% vs 2.2%, p = 0.40). Unexpectedly, new permanent pacemaker implantation and life-threatening bleeds were less frequently observed with pre-BAV group than with direct TAVR (10.4% vs 13.9%, p = 0.032 and 3.5% vs 6.5%, p = 0.007, respectively).

Conclusion: In this large TAVR dataset, direct implantation of the SAPIEN 3 THV without pre-BAV was feasible and safe and resulted in shorter procedures, without impact on 30-day prosthesis function and PVL.