Update on the clinical impact of mild aortic regurgitation after transcatheter aortic valve implantation: Insights from the Japanese multicenter OCEAN-TAVI registry

Objectives: This study aimed to compare the clinical impact of mild postprocedural aortic regurgitation (post-AR) to that of none-trivial post-AR after transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) and to identify the vulnerability factors to mild post-AR. Background: Moderate–severe post-AR, associated with increased mortality, is an important issue. However, the clinical impact of mild post-AR remains controversial. Methods and results: We analyzed data from 1,572 consecutive patients (1,026 of none-trivial post-AR and 546 of mild post-AR) obtained from the Optimized transCathEter vAlvular Intervention (OCEAN-TAVI) Japanese multicenter registry. We evaluated the 1-year cumulative cardiovascular death and re-hospitalization rates for heart failure (HF) after TAVI according to the degree of post-AR. Kaplan–Meier curves showed no significant difference between “none-trivial post-AR” and “mild post-AR” in terms of cardiovascular death, but a significant difference was noted in the cumulative incidence of re-hospitalization for HF between the two groups (hazard ratio 1.57, 95% confidence interval 1.02–2.41, p =.04). In the stratified analysis, only in patients with not more than 50% of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), concentric left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), and none-trivial pre-procedural aortic regurgitation (pre-AR), mild post-AR resulted in a higher incidence of re-hospitalization for HF. Conclusions: In this study, the clinical impact of mild post-AR compared to none-trivial post-AR tended to be augmented in the presence of reduced LVEF, concentric LVH, and none-trivial pre-AR. Pre-procedure echocardiographic findings including LVEF, left ventricular geometry, and pre-AR may help to judge the necessity of postdilatation in case of mild post-AR just after the bioprosthesis deployment.