The effect of multiple-inflation balloon aortic valvuloplasty

Recent improvements of balloon aortic valvuloplasty (BAV) devices and procedures have provided improved outcomes, but it is not clear whether the multiple-inflation BAV technique is effective in patients with symptomatic severe aortic valve stenosis (AS). We conducted an analysis of the impact of multiple-inflation BAV (at least 6 times inflation) on the mean aortic valve area (AVA) and mean aortic valve pressure gradient (AV-PG) in patients with symptomatic severe aortic stenosis as compared with conventional BAV (from single to three times inflation). We identified two studies of multiple-inflation BAV with antegrade approach using Inoue-balloon catheter (425 patients) and four studies of conventional BAV (170 patients) with retrograde approach. Using a random intercept model, we found that multiple-inflation BAV significantly increased mean AVA (mean difference (MD) [95% indicates confidence interval (CI)] = 0.25 [0.16–0.34], P