Transcatheter tricuspid valve repair could finally be tied to improved hard outcomes in people with severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR) at high risk for future heart failure (HF) events, a German trial found.
With operators using commercially available transcatheter devices, patients had 1-year results well surpassing expectations for reduced all-cause death and hospitalization for HF with improved quality of life (win ratio 2.42 over medical therapy alone, 95% CI 1.76-3.33), according to Jörg Hausleiter, MD, of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany.
Taking quality of life out of the equation, combined death from any cause and HF hospitalization at 3 years still significantly favored transcatheter repair for patients with symptomatic severe TR (52.4% with tricuspid repair vs 21.0% with medical therapy, HR 0.40, 95% CI 0.29-0.55).
Hausleiter presented the TRIC-I-HF trial results at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress in Munich, Germany, with a simultaneous publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"These findings extend previous evidence from randomized trials by showing that the benefits of an interventional strategy were not confined to improvements in quality of life but also translated into meaningful differences in hard clinical outcomes," study authors wrote. "The findings also showed the procedural safety as well as the sustained reduction in the severity of tricuspid regurgitation when transcatheter tricuspid-valve repair is performed at experienced heart-valve centers."
