ROCHESTER, MINN — Study results of one-year data for more than 12,000 patients who had transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in the United States show an overall one-year death rate of 23.7 percent and a stroke rate of 4.1 percent, according to a study published in the March 10 issue of JAMA. “Transcatheter aortic valve replacement has become transformational for patients who need a new valve and are at high-risk for surgery or inoperable. But we have been lacking long-term data for this group of patients who are considering this procedure,” says study lead author David R. Holmes, Jr., M.D., a Mayo Clinic interventional cardiologist. “Before this study, we only had 30-day information. This is a milestone and will help us better guide patients and learn as physicians.” For the study, researchers used the Transcatheter Valve Therapies Registry, developed by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons and the American College of Cardiology, combining 12,182 TAVR patient procedures performed from November 2011 through June 2013 and linking to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrative claims for one-year data using direct Medicare patient identifiers (name and social security numbers). Other important results from the study are:
PHOENIX — Feb. 21, 2014 — The Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees welcomed Samuel A. Di Piazza, Jr. as the new board chair and George Halvorson as a new member, recognized five retiring public members and three internal members who completed their tenure, and elected four new internal trustees.
Di Piazza replaces Marilyn Carlson Nelson, who is retiring from the board. Di Piazza recently announced that he was leaving Citi as vice chairman and a member of the Senior Client Executive Group to serve as Mayo Clinic’s Board of Trustees chair. Di Piazza joined the Mayo board in 2010. He joined Citi in May 2011 after a long career at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a partner and, ultimately, CEO from 2002 through 2009.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — By examining more than 3,600 postmortem brains, researchers at Mayo Clinic’s campuses in Jacksonville, Florida, and Rochester, Minnesota, have found that the progression of dysfunctional tau protein drives the cognitive decline and memory loss seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid, the other toxic protein that characterizes Alzheimer’s, builds up as dementia progresses, but is not the primary culprit, they say. The findings, published in Brain, offer new and valuable information in the long and ongoing debate about the relative contribution of amyloid and tau to the development and progression of cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer’s, says the study’s lead author, Melissa Murray, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. MEDIA CONTACT: Kevin Punsky, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 904-953-0746, punsky.kevin@mayo.edu Journalists: Video is available in the downloads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=452BcXATI4c