Patient population
This was a single center retrospective study of adult patients with
bicuspid aortic valve diagnosed by inpatient or outpatient transthoracic
echocardiogram (TTE) or transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) during
2013-2018 in a tertiary care center. Yale Institutional Review Board
approved this study and individual consent was waived (IRB ID:
2000020356). Among 48,504 unique patients who underwent echocardiogram
during that period, 245 adult patients were identified to have BAV by
screening for the words “bicuspid aortic valve”, “the valve has two
cusps”, or “bicuspid valve” in the echo report. For patients who were
included in this study, the first diagnosis of BAV captured by our
system was defined as the first echo report within the time period that
mentions BAV. The echocardiogram report was manually reviewed for each
patient to confirm the case definition. We recorded cases where the echo
report was equivocal for the diagnosis of bicuspid valve and used the
term ‘possible bicuspid aortic valve’ (Figure 1). The final date of
follow-up for chart review was January 23, 2020.