If you have severe aortic valve narrowing (aortic stenosis), then you may need an operation to cure it. TAVI (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Intervention) is used if open heart surgery is too high risk.
However, what if you are so frail that even TAVI may be risky? The trouble is, frailty is hard to quantify. Dr Malik’s research group, lead by Dr Fertleman, have published a study looking to see if we can quantify frailty. The good clinician can tell you if a patient is frail, but how frail? The good news is that even the frail patients (that are offered it) seem to gain from TAVI – they just take longer to recover. There is of course the VERY frail group that the team considered totally unsuitable. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to do well – Biology has caught up with them!
