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  • Editorial: The Undertreatment of Minorities With TAVR: An Unfulfilled Potential

    Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has revolutionized the treatment of aortic stenosis, prolonging life and improving symptoms for countless patients across the globe [  ,  ]. Although few would question the efficacy and safety of TAVR, due to persistent treatment inequities, its full potential has yet to be achieved. In this issue of Cardiovascular Revascularization Medicine , Ali et al. [  ] shed another sobering light on this problem within a single large metropolitan TAVR center. Using the Hartford Hospital TAVR database, the authors examined the clinical and demographic characteristics and short-term outcomes of patients undergoing TAVR from 2012 to 2020. In observing that African Americans (AA) and Hispanics represented only 1.6% and 0.7%, respectively, of the entire TAVR population, this study supports a decade of remarkably consistent and sobering data demonstrating the under-utilization of TAVR in minorities [  ,  ]. Similar to prior reports, minorities treated with TAVR within the authors' single-center experience were younger, presented with more comorbidities (i.e., diabetes mellitus, coronary artery disease, end-stage renal disease, and atrial fibrillation) and had longer lengths of hospital stay [  ]. These baseline dissimilarities did not translate into measurable differences in procedural complications and short-term outcomes, such as death, stroke, conversion to surgery, and permanent pacemaker implantation.

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