Baseline characteristics
The baseline clinical characteristics of the 202 patients included (72.3 ± 13.4 years, 63% men) and Doppler echocardiography according to valve morphology are presented in Table 1. Of the 202 patients, 43 (21%) had BAV and 159 (79%) has TAV.
As expected, patients with TAV compared to those with BAV were older (76 ± 9 vs. 55 ± 11 year old, p <0.0001), had a higher prevalence of comorbidities, such as hypertension (83% vs. 47%, p <0.0001), obstructive peripheral vascular disease (19% vs. 2%, p = 0.01) and a history of coronary heart disease (29% vs. 7%, p = 0.01).
At baseline patients with BAV had higher Vmax (3.1 ± 0.9 vs 2.9 ± 0.7 m/s, p=0.03) and higher transvalvular mean gradients (27.1 ± 15.1 vs 21.5 ± 12.3 mmHg, p=0.05) than TAV patients, but with similar AVA (1.2 ± 0.3 vs. 1.2 ± 0.3, p=0.8), indexed AVA (0.66 ± 0.22 vs. 0.65 ± 0.21 cm2, p=0.8) and similar AS severity grade. Among the 43 patients with BAV, 33 (77%) had a raphe.
Patients with BAV had larger absolut and height-indexed ascending aorta diameteres (3.78 ±0.52 vs. 3.47 ±0.55, p<0.001 and 2.18 ± 0.3 cm/m vs 2.06 ± 0.2 cm/m, p=0.05) than those with TAV. No differences in left ventricular geometry were observed between both groups.