End of Life After Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement A Danish Nationwide Cohort Study

BACKGROUND Survival after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has markedly increased. Thus, other comorbidities will intersect patient trajectories and challenge follow-up. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to describe patient characteristics and hospitalizations at end of life to further improve the quality of life for patients undergoing TAVR. METHODS Using Danish nationwide registers, all patients who underwent TAVR were matched 1:10 at the time of death on age, sex, and calendar year of death to controls from the general population. RESULTS From 2008 to 2022, 2,544 TAVR patients who died were matched with 25,440 controls (median age 86 years, 55.1% males). Frailty and comorbidities were more prevalent in the TAVR group (eg, intermediate/high frailty: 2,200/2,544 [86.4%] vs 18,966/25,440 [74.6%]; heart failure: 1,407/2,544 [55.3%] vs 4,641/25,440 [18.2%]; chronic kidney disease: 633/2,544 [24.9%] vs 3,353/25,440 [13.2%]). In the last year of life, 650 of 2,544 patients (25.6%) in the TAVR group were hospitalized >28 days vs 4,160 of 25,440 (16.4%) for the controls. Of hospitalizations in the last year of life, 4,900 of 6,943 (70.6%) vs 38,833 of 49,438 (78.5%) were for a noncardiovascular cause, 1,253 of 6,943 (18.0%) vs 4,924 of 49,438 (10.0%) were cardiovascular, and 790 of 6,943 (11.4%) vs 5,681 of 49,438 (11.5%) were because of symptoms (eg, dyspnea, vomiting, or urine retention) in the TAVR group and the control group, respectively. Of cardiovascular hospitalizations, 529 of 1,253 (42.2%) vs 1,322 of 4,924 (26.8%) were because of heart failure in the TAVR group vs the controls. CONCLUSIONS End of life for TAVR patients is characterized by high frailty and comorbidity burden. Importantly, most hospitalizations are of noncardiovascular cause, underscoring the need for a multidisciplinary approach toward end of life for TAVR patients. Future research is needed to improve follow-up and care in this patient population. (JACC Cardiovasc Interv. 2024;17:2936-2946) (c) 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier on behalf of the American College of Cardiology Foundation. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).