Transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement effective in patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation: Study

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that improvements in symptoms and quality of life were the main reasons why transcatheter tricuspid-valve replacement outperformed medical treatment alone for patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation in terms of the key composite outcome.

Even though it has been consistently demonstrated that severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR) is linked to a worse prognosis and a higher death rate, it is still undertreated and treated conservatively. For the following reasons, all patients with severe TR should have access to transcatheter repair and replacement technologies, which are evolving to meet this significant unmet clinical need. A higher risk of mortality and incapacitating symptoms are linked to severe tricuspid regurgitation. Thus, information on the results of percutaneous transcatheter tricuspid valve replacement were required. Therefore, Rebecca Hahn and team conducted this study in order to get an overall effectiveness of percutaneous transcatheter tricuspid-valve replacement in individuals with regurgitation.

This research randomly allocated 400 patients with serious symptomatic tricuspid regurgitation in a 2:1 ratio to either medical therapy alone (control group) or transcatheter tricuspid-valve replacement with medical therapy (valve-replacement group) in this worldwide multicenter study. The following were the hierarchical composite primary outcomes: hospitalization for heart failure, postindex tricuspid-valve intervention, implantation of a right ventricular assist device or heart transplant, all-cause mortality, improvement of at least 10 points on the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire overall summary (KCCQ-OS), improvements of at least one New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class, and improvement of at least 30 meters on the 6-minute walk distance. By comparing every potential patient pair, beginning with the initial event in the hierarchy, a win ratio was determined for the primary result.