Trends in isolated aortic valve replacement in middle‑aged patients over the last 10 years: epidemiology, risk factors, valve pathology, valve types, and outcomes

Background: Valve prosthesis selection in aortic valve replacement (AVR) is particularly difficult in middle‑aged patients (60–70 years old). Aims: We described changes in trends and outcomes of AVR in middle‑aged patients over the last 10 years, based on the real‑life single‑center data from the Polish National Registry. Methods: A total of 4912 consecutive adult patients who underwent any type of isolated aortic valve surgery between 2006 to 2016 were included. The main outcome measures were changes in the number of procedures, characteristics, surgical details, and in‑hospital mortality. Results: Out of all 4912 AVR procedures performed, 1531 patients (31.2%) were between 60 and 70 years of age. The share of aortic valve prosthesis in the overall number of replacements changed between 2006 and 2016 for mechanical valves (MV) from 98.3% to 15.2% and for biological valves (BV) from 0% to 81.8% (P < 0.001 for both comparisons). In the BV group, stented valves were implanted in 92.6%. The most common MV was the St. Jude Medical Mechanical Heart Valve (St. Jude Medical, Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States) and most common BV was the Carpentier‑Edwards Perimount Magna (Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, California, United States). The most common prosthesis size was 23 mm. There were no significant differences in body mass index and comorbidities between the patients with MV and BV. The overall in‑hospital mortality was 3.46% (3.33% in the MV group and 3.69% in the BV group; P = 0.85). Conclusions: In the last 10 years, one‑third of aortic valve replacements were performed in patients between 60 and 70 years of age. We observed rapidly changing trends in the type of implanted valve prostheses