The Requirement of Extracorporeal Circulation System for Transluminal Aortic Valve Replacement: Do We Really Need It in the Catheterization Laboratory

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is the mainstay for treating high-risk patients with aortic stenosis. As the TAVR procedures worldwide keep increasing, it is inevitable that more issues and complications will arise. Such a complication that merits attention is the conversion of TAVR into open-heart surgery and the necessity this complication creates to have an extracorporeal circulation system in the catheterization laboratory. This review contains an analysis of all major randomized trials and registries on the number and cause of TAVR procedures that ended up in open-heart surgery and presents data to challenge the prerequisite of extracorporeal circulation system in the cath laboratory.