Acute Valve Syndrome in Aortic Stenosis

Background: To describe the impact of clinical presentation among patients with aortic stenosis (AS) undergoing aortic valve replacement (AVR). Methods: We analyzed a real-world dataset including patients from 29 US hospitals (egnite Database, egnite). Patients over 18 years old with moderate or greater AS undergoing AVR were included. Patients were classified into 3 groups according to the acuity and severity of clinical presentation prior to AVR: (i) asymptomatic, (ii) progressive signs and symptoms (progressive valve syndrome [PVS]), and (iii) acute or advanced signs and symptoms (acute valve syndrome [AVS]). Mortality and heart failure hospitalization after AVR were examined with Kaplan-Meier estimates, with results compared using the log-rank test. Results: Among 2,009,607 patients in our database, 17,838 underwent AVR (78.6% transcatheter AVR, 21.4% surgical AVR). Age was 76.5 ± 9.7 years, and 40.2% were female. Prior to AVR, 2504 (14.0%) were asymptomatic, 6116 (34.3%) presented with PVS, and 9218 (51.7%) presented with AVS. At 2 years, the estimated rate of mortality for asymptomatic, PVS, and AVS were 5.8% (4.6%-7.0%), 7.6% (6.7%-8.4%), and 17.5% (16.5%-18.5%), respectively, and the estimated rate of hospitalization with heart failure for asymptomatic, PVS, and AVS were 11.1% (9.5%-12.6%), 19.0% (17.8%-20.2%), and 41.5% (40.2%-42.8%), respectively. After adjustment, patients presenting with AVS had increased risk of mortality after AVR (hazard ratio, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.8-2.6). Conclusions: From a large, real-world database of patients undergoing AVR for AS, most patients presented with AVS, which was associated with an increased risk of mortality and heart failure hospitalization.