Ethnic and Gender Disparities in the Uptake of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement in the United States

Introduction: Little is known about ethnic and gender disparities for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedures in the United States. Methods: We queried the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) database (2011–2014) to identify patients who underwent TAVR. We described the temporal trends in the uptake of TAVR procedures among various ethnicities and genders. Results: Our analysis identified 39,253 records; 20,497 (52.2%) were men and 18,756 (47.8%) were women. Among all TAVRs, 87.2% were Caucasians, 3.9% were African Americans (AA), 3.7% were Hispanics, and 5.2% were of other ethnicities. We found a significant rise in the trend of TAVRs in all groups: in Caucasian men (coefficient = 0.946, p < 0.001), Caucasian women (coefficient = 0.985, p < 0.001), AA men (coefficient = 0.940, p < 0.001), AA women (coefficient = 0.864, p < 0.001), Hispanic men (coefficient = 0.812, p = 0.001), Hispanic women (coefficient = 0.845, p < 0.001). Hence, the uptrend was most significant among Caucasian women, and relatively least significant among Hispanic men. Multivariate regression analysis was conducted to evaluate in-hospital mortality among different groups after adjusting for demographics and baseline characteristics. After multivariable regression for baseline characteristics overall, the in-hospital mortality per 100 TAVRs was highest among Hispanic men 5.5%, followed by Caucasian women 5.0%, Hispanic women 4.6%, AA women 3.7%, AA men 3.4%, and Caucasian men 3.38% (adjusted p value = 0.004). Conclusions: In this observational study, we demonstrated that there is evidence of ethnic and gender differences in the overall uptake and adjusted mortality of TAVRs in the United States.