Late Outcomes After Aortic Root Enlargement During Aortic Valve Replacement: Meta-Analysis With Reconstructed Time-To-Event Data

Objectives: The present authors aimed to assess the late outcomes of patients undergoing aortic root enlargement (ARE) at the time of surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR). Design: Study-level meta-analysis with reconstructed time-to-event data. Setting: Follow-up of patients after surgical procedure. Participants: Adult patients with aortic valve disease requiring surgery. Interventions: SAVR with ARE versus SAVR without ARE. Measurements and Main Results: This study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses reporting guideline. The following databases were searched for studies meeting the authors’ inclusion criteria and published by November 30, 2021: PubMed/MEDLINE, Embase, SciELO, LILACS, CCTR/CENTRAL, and Google Scholar. Nine nonrandomized studies met the authors’ eligibility criteria. All studies were nonrandomized. A total of 213,134 patients (SAVR with ARE: 7,556 patients; SAVR without ARE: 205,578 patients) were included from studies published from 1997 to 2021. The total rate of AAE was 3.7%, varying in the studies from 2.9% to 28.1%. The studies consisted of patients whose mean age varied from 63 to 79 years. Patients in the SAVR with ARE group had a significantly better overall survival (hazard ratio [HR] 0.94, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.90-0.99, p = 0.016) in the unmatched populations, but the matched analysis revealed no difference between SAVR with/without ARE in terms of overall survival (HR, 1.06; 95% CI, 0.90-1.25; p = 0.474). Conclusions: In the context of patients undergoing SAVR with or without ARE, patients who undergo ARE do not experience worse late outcomes. Further randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm or refute the authors’ current findings.