Procedural Characteristics
First surgery dated back in mean 7.9 ± 4.3 years. Per definition, all patients had prior aortic valve replacement. Concomitant procedures during first surgery were CABG (n=32/77; 41.6%) and surgery for aortic disease (n=5/77; 6.5%). Further details are summarized in Table 2 .
Type of degenerated surgical valve was predominantly stented with 94.8% (n=73/77). Out of these 37.0% (n=27/73) had externally mounted leaflets. Mean labeled size of the surgical valves was 23.1 ± 2.3mm with a mean true-ID of 20.4 ± 2.6mm. A proportion of 58.4% (n=45/77) had a true-ID less or equal 21mm.
Chosen access route was transfemoral in 72.7% (n=56/77) and transapical in the remaining cases (n=21/77; 27.3%). Used TAVR-valves were Edwards SAPIEN (n= 8/77; 27.7%), SAPIEN XT (n= 10/77; 29.8%) and SAPIEN 3 (n= 6/77; 12.8%) as balloon-expandable devices and the Medtronic Evolut R (n= 44/77; 29.8%) and Symetis Accurate (n=9/77; 11.7%) as self-expanding prostheses. The overall-ratio of self-expandable valves was 68.8% (n=53/77). The TAVR procedures themselves were uneventful. There were neither intraoperative deaths nor procedure related complications. Particularly device malposition, embolization or conversion to surgery did not occur. Mean procedure time was 45.3 ± 12.7 minutes. Table 2 summarizes the procedural data.