ACC House Call: Tsuyoshi Kaneko, MD, on Late-Breaking TAVR Data

While the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together with World Congress of Cardiology (ACC.20/WCC) featured thousands of pieces of information that could prove useful for cardiologists, research related to aortic valve replacement was the center of an entire late-breaking session during the conference.

The session included a total of 5 studies examining a variety of topics from anticoagulation strategy following trans catheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) to TAVR in patient subgroups, further adding to the excitement surrounding the revolutionary treatment.

Between these 5 studies and dozens of other abstracts related to TAVR from ACC.20/WCC, the information can be hard to sort and analyze. With this in mind, we sat down with Tsuyoshi Kaneko, MD, a cardiac surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, to get his perspective on data from the meeting.

The following conversation features a discussion on 3 of the late-breaking abstracts presented in the aforementioned session: results of the Evolut low risk bicuspid study, 2-year results of the Partners 3 trial, and results of the POPular-TAVI cohort B.

Briefly, the low risk bicuspid study returned promising results but with the caveat of increased need for pacemakers, Partners 3 indicated the benefits of TAVR were not as great as was seen when examining the 1-year results of the trial, and POPular-TAVI indicated oral anticoagulation reduced bleeding compared to oral anticoagulation with dual antiplatelet therapy.

In this special edition ACC House Call, Kaneko discusses the 3 aforementioned trials and what he thinks they offer to clinicians who may be performing these procedures. For more perspective on TAVR from Kaneko, check out the rest of the interview where we discuss work he took part in from ACC.20/WCC.