Comparison of in-hospital outcomes between octogenarians and nonagenarians undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement: a propensity matched analysis

BACKGROUND: Aortic valve stenosis (AS) is very common in the elderly patients above 80 years. Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in such patients is being increasingly performed. This study sought to assess in-hospital outcome differences between octogenarians and nonagenarians and predictors of mortality in nonagenarians undergoing TAVR with severe AS. METHOD: The study population was derived from the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) for the years 2012–2014 using ICD-9 CM procedure codes 35.05 and 35.06 for TAVR. Hospitalizations below 80 years of age were excluded. After performing propensity score matching (1: 2), in-hospital outcomes were compared in matched cohorts. Then, multivariate model was developed to analyze predictors of in-hospital mortality in nonagenarians. RESULTS: There were 11,630 hospitalizations in the octogenarian and 5815 hospitalizations in the nonagenarian group. Primary outcome of in-hospital mortality (6% vs. 4.1%, P ≤ 0.001) was higher in nonagenarians compared to octogenarians. Secondary outcomes including stroke (3.4% vs. 2.8%, P ≤ 0.001), renal failure (18.9% vs. 17.3%, P ≤ 0.001), blood transfusion (35% vs. 32.6%, P ≤ 0.001), vascular complications (4.5% vs. 3.5%, P ≤ 0.001), and pacemaker implantation (27.8% vs. 24.8%, P ≤ 0.001) were higher in nonagenarians. There was no difference in their length of stay. Median cost (70,374$ vs. 65,381$, P ≤ 0.001) was slightly higher with nonagenarian. CONCLUSIONS: Although in-hospital mortality is slightly higher in nonagenarians, it is acceptable. This difference in mortality is at least partly explained by higher complications in nonagenarians. Efforts should be made to decrease the complications which can further narrow the difference in in-hospital mortality between the groups.