Calcific aortic valve disease: outflow obstruction is the end stage of a systemic disease process

Calcific aortic valve disease: outflow obstruction is the end stage of a systemic disease process.

Over the past decade, a body of evidence has accumulated demonstrating that calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is prevalent in older adults and that the presence of calcific valve disease is associated with adverse clinical outcomes, even in the absence of left ventricular (LV) outflow tract obstruction. Stritzke et al. report for the KORA/MONICA study that degenerative (or calcific) aortic v...

Calcific Aortic Valve Disease

Aortic stenosis due to calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is currently the main indication for aortic valve replacement in developed countries (Iung et al, 2003). Due to an aging population and a decline in rheumatic heart disease, CAVD has become the most common heart valve disease in the Western countries, affecting approximately 25% of adults over 65 years, of which 2-3% has clinically sig...

Calcific Aortic Valve Disease

Despite the high prevalence and severe consequences of calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD), its pathogenesis remains relatively poorly understood. For many years, CAVD was considered a degenerative disease, where calcification was a consequence of normal aging. Although it is now widely accepted that CAVD is an active disease process, the erroneous degenerative label contributed to delayed pro...

Imaging Calcific Aortic Valve Disease

Clinical trials of medical therapy to prevent progression in calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) are hampered by the lack of sensitive measures of disease activity in the valve leaflets. Although the long-term goal of therapy is to prevent adverse cardiovascular outcomes, including mortality and aortic valve replacement, these end points have several limitations. First, the hard end point of m...

The Hemodynamics of Calcific Aortic Valve Disease