Professor Vahanian, Bichat Hospital, Paris, France, is a world leader in management of patients with Valvular Heart Disease and is the lead author of the European Society of Cardiology Guidelines. In this interview, held during the Transcatheter Valve Therapeutics Meeting in Vancouver, Canada in June 2014, Professor Vahanian talks with Catherine Otto about the current approach to patient selection for transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI).

The availability of TAVI has transformed our approach to the elderly or high risk patient with severe aortic stenosis and the use of this technology continues to expand as technical issues are resolved and more data on valve durability is published.

Clinicians will want to keep up to date on the latest information so appropriate patients are referred for this life saving treatment.

To read more about transcatheter aortic valve implantation, see several recent articles in Heart:

Predictive factors of early mortality after transcatheter aortic valve implantation: individual risk assessment using a simple score http://goo.gl/lcflnl

Predictors of 1-year mortality in patients with aortic regurgitation after transcatheter aortic valve implantation: an analysis from the multicentre German TAVI registry http://goo.gl/WkfmM5

Aortic regurgitation severity after transcatheter aortic valve implantation is underestimated by echocardiography compared with MRI http://goo.gl/KIo6B4

Cardiac magnetic resonance versus transthoracic echocardiography for the assessment and quantification of aortic regurgitation in patients undergoing transcatheter aortic valve implantation http://goo.gl/YTcbaf

Original article: Device-dependent association between paravalvar aortic regurgitation and outcome after TAVI http://goo.gl/u5dK82