Abstract
Background
Older adults with severe aortic stenosis (AS) are at high risk of mortality unless surgical or transcatheter aortic valve replacement (AVR) is performed. Risk stratification often becomes complicated in frail elders with multi-morbidity, and time constraints limit thorough evaluation of geriatric comorbidities in the outpatient clinic setting.
Purpose
Utilization of an automated administratively-derived electronic health record (EHR) tool may aid in risk stratification of AS patients undergoing AVR.
Methods
We reviewed patients with severe AS undergoing AVR at our hospital program and cross-referenced with the Elder Risk Assessment (ERA) score. The ERA score is an administratively abstracted score derived on adults >60 years old followed by general medicine clinic. It contains the following variables: marital status, age, hospitalized days in preceding 2 years, diabetes, coronary disease, heart failure, stroke, pulmonary disease, cancer, and dementia; higher scores indicate greater risk for adverse outcomes. Kaplan-Meier method was used to estimate survival by ERA score tertile. Cox regression was used to test the association of ERA with survival.
Results
There were 97 patients with severe AS undergoing AVR with ERA scores. Mean age was 80.6 (±6.6) years, 37% were female, average Society of Thoracic Surgery (STS) score was 3.6% (± 2.6), and 7% had transcatheter AVR. Co-morbidities were prevalent and included atrial fibrillation (41%), chronic renal failure (16%), stroke (14%), and diabetes (35%). Over a mean follow-up of 68 months (± 37.9 months), there were 62 deaths. Elevated ERA score was associated with worse long term survival (p=0.016 by log-rank) (Figure 1), with only 49% surviving at 5 years in the highest ERA tertile vs 68% in the lowest ERA tertile. Cox regression demonstrated that the relative risk of death per 6 unit increase in ERA score was 1.54 (95% CI 1.21–1.96, P<0.001) in single variable analysis and 1.43 (95% CI 1.11–1.84, P=0.006) after adjusting for STS score.
Conclusions
Patients undergoing AVR for severe AS are often co-morbid older adults. An automated EHR derived ERA score was independently associated with survival after accounting for STS score and may streamline and improve risk assessment in these patients.
Figure 1
Funding Acknowledgement
Type of funding source: Foundation. Main funding source(s): Mayo Clinic