Left ventricular assist devices for destination therapy: First experience in septuagenarians

Objectives: The number of elderly patients suffering from congestive heart failure has increased dramatically in recent years. In the context of global stagnation of heart transplantation, comes the need for an alternative definitive therapy for these patients. Recently left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) have increased significantly, surpassing even the number of transplants worldwide. The technological development of new devices and the emergence of new surgical techniques arising from minimally invasive cardiac surgery have been part of this development. The purpose of this study was to review the first series of minimally invasive LVAD implants in septuagenarian patients. Methods: A prospective single-centre clinical trial was conducted on all patients greater than or equal to 70 years that required an LVAD implant (HVAD, HeartWare Inc.) as destination therapy for the years 2013 to 2015 in the Medizinische Hochschule Clinic in Hannover. The monitoring ended after two years. All patients were operated by a minimally invasive technique consisting of a 1" mini-sternotomy and a left lateral thoracotomy. Results: A total of 14 patients were included (age 71.8 +/- 1 1.5 years, all (100%) males, and 64.3% with ischaemic heart disease). It was a second operation for 50% of the cases, and 7.1% received a prior mechanical circulatory assist device (MCAD). All patients were operated on using extracorporeal circulation (ECC) for a mean time of 51 +/- 8 min). The mean length of stay in ICU was 6.4 +/- 5.2 days. Adverse events during the early post-operative period included, surgical re-intervention due to bleeding (7.1%), right ventricular failure (14.3%), and dialysis (14.3%). Survival rates were: 30 days: 85.7% 1 year: 78.6% 2 years: 70.7%. Conclusions: The initial results show that minimally invasive implantation of LVAD can be performed effectively, safely, and with good results in septuagenarian patients as destination therapy. There were low levels of adverse events during a two year follow-up, showing that destination therapy can be performed even in patients in their seventies. (C) 2016 Sociedad Espanola de Cirugla Torkica-Cardiovascular. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (littp://crea tivecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.01).