Albumin Is Predictive of 1-Year Mortality After Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement

Hebeler and colleagues hypothesized that the inclusion of measures of frailty might improve the prediction of mortality one-year after transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). In 470 patients undergoing TAVR, sarcopenia was measured and frailty was assessed preoperatively by gait speed, hand grip strength, serum albumin, and Katz activities of daily living. The addition of both sarcopenia and frailty measures to the STS Predicted Risk of Mortality improved the predictive capacity of the model (area under the curve of 0.61 versus 0.52), and albumin was the only marker that was significantly associated with an increased one-year mortality risk.