Onsite cardiac surgery standby during transcatheter aortic valve implantation: when and why

In the last 5 years, most of the awaited endpoints of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) have been attended with regards of patients at high risk for surgery: TAVI has shown to be a reliable alternative to surgery (1,2). Moreover, in a recent analysis TAVI showed to be even superior in term of mortality and stroke (3) in an intermediate risk subset.