Early surgery can improve the outcomes of patients with severe tricuspid regurgitation undergoing tricuspid replacement.

Background: Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) usually remains asymptomatic for a long time, such that it is most often diagnosed at an advanced stage of right heart failure. The purpose of this study was to identify clinical characteristics and overall outcomes in patients with severe TR who received tricuspid valve replacement (TVR) at different clinical stages.

Methods: Between 1993 and 2018, 256 severe TR patients who received TVR alone or in combination with other procedures were assessed at Beijing Anzhen Hospital. Ninety-three patients underwent New York Heart Association (NYHA) class I/II operations (early surgery group), and the others underwent NYHA class III/IV operations. The primary outcome was in-hospital and long-term mortality. Clinical outcomes were evaluated by the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression models. Follow-up was conducted annually. Propensity score matching and overlap propensity score weighting were performed as sensitivity analyses.

Results: Postoperative complications, including low cardiac output (11.8% . 26.4%, P<0.001), renal failure (2.2% . 16.6%, P<0.001), and bleeding (3.2% . 11.7%, P=0.037), were significantly lower in the NYHA class I/II group than in the NYHA III/IV group. Patients in the NYHA class III/IV group had a significantly higher incidence of in-hospital mortality (18.4% . 5.4%, P<0.001) and long-term mortality (33.7% . 11.8%, P=0.006) after follow-up (median follow-up duration =63 months). The results indicated a consistently higher occurrence rate in the propensity score-matched cohort and overlap propensity score weighted analysis.

Conclusions: Consistent with the recent clinical trend to provide earlier and more aggressive TR intervention, our results indicate that surgery for severe TR patients should be considered before advanced heart failure develops, when patients are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic (NYHA class I/II).