Introduction
The current COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impact on the
healthcare delivery. There is a constant balance needed to rationalize
limited resources while minimizing the risk of delaying important
interventional procedures. The specific impact of COVID-19 on patients
with aortic stenosis is not well studied. It is known however, that
these patients, who are older and have pre-existing cardiac disease, are
especially vulnerable1. In addition, symptomatic
severe aortic stenosis is a time sensitive disease and increase in wait
times can potentially increase mortality2. In Asia,
the pandemic is at varying stages in different geographies (e.g. China,
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam are seeing very few new cases, while
several others are in the middle of the pandemic at the time of
writing). While there has been prior guidance for the treatment of
transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) from other cardiac
interventional societies3,4, It is unclear how the
TAVI situation is in Asia. This letter describes the collective
experience of how TAVI management has changed in Asia during this time
and provides expert consensus recommendations on the role of
transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) during the COVID-19
pandemic.