With increased life expectancy and aging of the population, aortic stenosis is now one of the most common valvular heart diseases. Early recognition and management of aortic stenosis are of paramount importance because untreated symptomatic severe disease is universally fatal. The advent of transcather aortic valve replacement technologies provides exciting avenues of care to patients with this disease in whom traditional surgical procedures could not be performed or were associated with high risk. This review for clinicians offers an overview of aortic stenosis and updated information on the current status of various treatment strategies. An electronic literature search of PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Scopus was performed from conception July 1, 2016, through November 30, 2017, using the terms aortic stenosis, aortic valve replacement, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), transcatheter aortic valve insertion (TAVI), surgical aortic valve replacement, aortic stenosis flow-gradient patterns, low-flow aortic valve stenosis, natural history, stress testing, pathophysiology, bicuspid aortic valve, and congenital aortic valve disease.
Despite the same degree of AS severity, women have less AVC and lower AVW compared with men, irrespective of valve morphology. Aortic valve calcium is correlated to excised AVW. Hypertension, diabetes, and current cigarette smoking were independently associated with AVW.
In an age-matched cohort, TAV compared with BAV stenosis is associated with greater prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and cardiac impairment and worse survival after AVR.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.