Clinical Trials on Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) to be conducted by American College of Cardiology and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons
Curator: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

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UPDATED on 6/22/2017
SOURCE
1 in 10 TAVR Procedures Done Off-Label Despite early risks vs on-label use, ‘acceptable results’ cited from registry
https://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/CHF/66173?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-06-22&eun=g99985d0r&pos=1
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Primary Source
JAMA Cardiology
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Secondary Source
JAMA Cardiology
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Additional Source
JAMA Cardiology
UPDATED on 11/24/2013
Second Generation Transcatheter Aortic Valve Shown to Successfully Address TAVR Complications

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SOURCE

“This is the first time the societies have ever filed for an investigational device exemption,” former ACC president Ralph Brindis is quoted as saying. “The goal of the effort is to gain reimbursement for an expanded set of procedures with Sapien to make the device accessible to more patients.”
Two medical societies jump into clinical trial effort for TAVR tech – FierceMedicalDevices http://www.fiercemedicaldevices.com/story/two-medical-societies-jump-clinical-trial-effort-tavr-tech/2013-02-12#ixzz2Kjk7MHEi
The new trials will mean that reimbursement will now be possible for some of these uses when patients are enrolled in the clinical trials. According to Mack, the NCD “took off-label use off the table. If you are a cynic this is good, but if you’re a practitioner this is tying your hands.”
According to Forbes, STS president Michael Mack told The Gray Sheet (a subscription-only publication) that the first trial will look at alternatives to transfemoral approaches in 1,000 patients who couldn’t otherwise have aortic valve surgery. There was a coordinated effort to develop a trial protocol, worked out between the CACC, STS, CMS, Edwards and the FDA. Expanded uses require an FDA label, he noted, and the only way to do that is to conduct a clinical trial with an IDE in hand.
So why would expanded TAVR uses be necessary? Well, the procedure has become very much in demand, and physicians already began pursuing off-label uses once they learned the initial TAVR procedure, Brindis told Forbes. The magazine notes that the entrance of both the STS and ACC into TAVR clinical trials greatly expands the TVT registry that they run, which tracks TAVR use in the United States to help physicians comply with Medicare’s National Coverage Decision for TAVR.
TAVR is indeed a hot space. St. Jude Medical ($STJ) won a CE mark for its Portico transcatheter heart valve late last fall, and Edwards’ Sapien competes with Medtronic‘s ($MDT) CoreValve in Europe. And smaller companies such as Micro Interventional Devices are working hard to develop surgical tools designed to enable TAVR procedures.
Brindis and Mack said that the ACC and STS worked closely with CMS,the FDA, and Edwards to develop the trial protocol. In the trial, patients not eligible for aortic valve surgery will receive TAVR through transapical and transaortic approaches and will be compared with the results of patients in the original PARTNER A trial who received TAVR through the transapical approach. Mack concedes that the trial design is not idea. “There is no perfect comparator,” he acknowledged.
Other experts in the field contacted by CardioBrief agreed that the challenges of trial design in this situation are quite formidable. Randomized trials are not always feasible and, in some situations, may be unethical. The IDE is an attempt to balance the need for rational clinical trials, on the one hand, and the growing pressure to perform off-label procedures. It should be noted that an important safeguard for patients remains in place: all potential TAVR patients will still need to be evaluated by both a cardiologist and a cardiac surgeon as part of the “heart team” approach mandated by the FDA and the NCD.
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The ACC and STS are now working to gain FDA approval to perform two more studies. One would examine the role of alternative approaches in the high-risk population eligible for surgery. The second would study valve-in-valve TAVR procedures. Both studies also present challenging problems of trial design. Mack said he anticipates FDA approval of these protocols in the next few months.
Edwards agreed in principle to fund the clinical trials. An Edwards representative confirmed that the company planned to support these new trials, but the details have not yet been hammered out.
Two medical societies jump into clinical trial effort for TAVR tech – FierceMedicalDevices http://www.fiercemedicaldevices.com/story/two-medical-societies-jump-clinical-trial-effort-tavr-tech/2013-02-12#ixzz2KjheTKHN
Larry Husten, wrote on 5/04/2012 in Forbes, The final decision earlier this week by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide reimbursement for TAVR was the latest step in a long, ongoing process that, for once, didn’t appear broken, and, in fact, represented an unusual consensus among physicians, regulators, insurers, and other involved parties In his article
Politics and Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement
From the first early stages of its development, the prospect of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) provoked two broad and competing fears:
- Regulatory safeguards would kill a promising new technology, denying its life-saving benefits to many thousands of desperately sick people.
- The stampede to stake a claim in a promising, highly lucrative new territory would lead to the exploitation and mistreatment of many thousands of desperately sick people.
Scott Gottlieb, a conservative activist who is a former FDA deputy commissioner and CMS adviser, concludes that the CMS ruling means “that for costly procedures, Washington will be making more of these choices for us.” In a posting on the American Enterprise Institute’s The Enterprise Blog, Gottlieb writes that the decision “is a vivid example of how our healthcare is going to get reimbursed now that Washington calls more of the shots.”
CMS has insisted that doctors who perform the procedure have adequate training and that the hospitals where the procedures are performed have sufficient experience and adequate facilities. Perhaps Scott Gottlieb, MD would be happy to send an elderly relative for TAVR to a local community hospital with little experience in the procedure. It was precisely to avoid this scenario that the American College of Cardiology and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons supported CMS in this coverage decision. I fail to see how anyone would benefit by widespread proliferation of TAVR by novice operators at inexperienced centers.
- Physicians,
- Regulators,
- Insurers,
- CMS,
- Medical Device Manufactures
- ACC, and
- STS
will be cooperating in the College of Cardiology and Society of Thoracic Surgeons newly announced involvement in Clinical Trials on broader use of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedure to include new patients that this procedure will be indicated for and CMS reimbursed.
Other aspects of the Procedure, and the role EdwardsSciences played in the development and the Industry Leadership it holds in the US, are covered in several articles on this Open Access Online Scientific Journal, including the following:
August 7, 2012 – Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI): risk for stroke and suitability for surgery
August 2, 2012 – Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI): Risky and Costly
June 4, 2012 – Investigational Devices: Edwards Sapien Transcatheter Aortic Valve Transapical Deployment http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/06/04/investigational-devices-edwards-sapien-transcatheter-heart-valve/
June 10, 2012 — Investigational Devices: Edwards Sapien Transcatheter Aortic Heart Valve Replacement Transfemoral Deployment http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/06/10/investigational-devices-edwards-sapien-transcatheter-aortic-heart-valve-replacement-transfemoral-deployment/
6/19/2012 Executive Compensation and Comparator Group Definition in the Cardiac and Vascular Medical Devices Sector: A Bright Future for Edwards Lifesciences Corporation in the Transcatheter Heart Valve Replacement Market