The safety of early discharge following transfemoral transcatheter aortic valve replacement under general anesthesia.

BACKGROUND

There is growing evidence of the safety of same-day discharge for low-risk conscious sedated TAVR patients. However, the evidence supporting the safety of early discharge following GA-TAVR with routine transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) is limited.

AIMS

To assess the safety of early discharge following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) using General Anesthesia (GA-TAVR) and identify predictors for patient selection.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We used data from 2,447 TEE-guided GA-TAVR patients performed at Cedars-Sinai between 2016 and 2021. Patients were categorized into three groups based on the discharge time from admission: 24 h, 24-48 h, and >48 h. Predictors for 30-day outcomes (cumulative adverse events and death) were validated on a matched cohort of 24 h vs. >24 h using the bootstrap model.

RESULTS

The >48 h group had significantly worse baseline cardiovascular profile, higher surgical risk, low functional status, and higher procedural complications than the 24 h and the 24-48 h groups. The rate of 30-day outcomes was significantly lower in the 24 h than the >48 h but did not differ from the 24-48 h (11.3 vs. 15.5 vs. 11.7%, = 0.003 and = 0.71, respectively). Independent poor prognostic factors of 30-day outcomes had a high STS risk of ≥8 (OR 1.90, 95% CI 1.30-2.77, -value = 3.2, < 0.001), low left ventricle ejection fraction of <30% (OR 6.0, 95% CI 3.96-9.10, -value = 11.5, < 0.001), and life-threatening procedural complications (OR 2.65, 95% CI 1.20-5.89, -value = 4.7, = 0.04). Our formulated predictors showed a good discrimination ability for patient selection (AUC: 0.78, 95% CI 0.75-0.81).

CONCLUSION

Discharge within 24 h following GA-TAVR using TEE is safe for selected patients using our proposed validated predictors.