STS Past President Joe Bavaria, MD, member Marc Gillinov, MD, and other cardiac surgeons talk to the Washington Post about the benefits and future of a heart procedure known as transcatheter aortic valve replacement or TAVR.

Many experts believe that TAVR will become the first-line valve replacement treatment for almost everyone with aortic valve disease.

“I think transcatheter valve technology is going to rule,” says Dr. Bavaria, co-director of the transcatheter valve program at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s a great technology, a radical, revolutionary technology. You don’t have to open up the chest and put somebody on a heart-lung machine. In the future — I can’t tell you when, but at some time — most aortic valve procedures will be done through a transcatheter approach.”

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