SMCMA Physician

TAVR Trial Findings Open Procedure to Low Risk Patients

It’s clear that the Bay Area is a good place to live if your need an intense medical procedure like open-heart surgery, but now it’s also one of the only places in the state where you can easily avoid open-heart surgery!

TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement) is a minimally invasive procedure that repairs a critical valve in the heart – which can wear out over time, limiting blood flow throughout the body.

The TAVR procedure inserts a replacement valve through a catheter without the need for open-heart surgery. While TAVR has been available for 10 years it has always been reserved for only those patients who couldn’t safely have open-heart surgery; everyone else had to go under the knife.

A major clinical trial published at the end of March showed that TAVR should now be considered the gold standard for everyone – even those patients at low-risk for complications from open-heart surgery. Sutter Health affiliated Mills-Peninsula Medical Center was a major contributor to the trial and three Bay Area Sutter Health hospitals are the only facilities in Northern California that are currently participating in a continued access protocol that covers TAVR for “low-risk” patients while the FDA and Medicare deliberate the findings of the trial and update their label / policies that pertain to TAVR.

This is welcome news for many people who have actually held off on having their valve replaced because they feared open-heart surgery, even if technically they could “tolerate” it by medical standards. Sutter Health is proud to offer the TAVR procedure to low risk patients, first as part of the trial, and now under the continued access protocol.