Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR): Leaders in heart care innovation

At UW Health, we’re nationally known for heart care. Patients come to us for the most advanced treatments and services. One of these is TAVR — transcatheter aortic heart valve replacement — a minimally invasive treatment that we helped pioneer. 

TAVR is a treatment for aortic valve stenosis. The aortic valve helps move blood from your heart to your aorta, the large artery that carries oxygen-rich blood to your body. Stenosis refers to narrowing of the valve.

Stenosis commonly occurs when calcium builds up in your valve. This is often a result of aging. Your heart must work harder to get blood through a narrowed valve. This increases your risk of heart failure and abnormal heart rhythms. Many people with aortic valve stenosis develop chest pain, fatigue and dizziness. Exercise may also become more difficult. 

TAVR allows us to correct these problems by placing a new valve directly into your diseased valve. Rather than doing surgery and opening your chest, we deliver the new valve with a catheter that we insert into an artery and thread to your heart. 

In most cases, you have a shorter hospital stay with TAVR than with open-heart surgery. Your overall recovery is also faster.

Who is TAVR for? 

We use TAVR to treat adults with severe aortic stenosis who would not tolerate open-heart surgery well. Doctors make sure that the benefit you would get from the treatment would not be offset by other medical conditions you have.

Here’s what you can expect during treatment: 

1. We make a small incision in an artery. Most often, we use the femoral artery in your groin.

2. We thread a catheter to your heart. The catheter is a thin, flexible tube. We watch it as it moves through your artery using real-time X-ray images. On the tip of the catheter is a balloon with the new valve placed over it. 

3. We place the new valve. When the catheter reaches your aortic valve, doctors inflate the balloon. This expands the new valve so that it will stay in position. It begins taking over the work of your diseased valve.

4. We remove the catheter. Once the valve is safely in place, we remove the catheter and close your incision. Your stay in the hospital is just a few days so we can monitor you and make sure your new valve is working well.