Types of structural interventions

The incidence of valvular heart disease is growing in the context of new therapeutics in healthcare and an aging global population (Coffey et al., 2021). Given the substantial morbidity, mortality, and expanding financial costs associated with the management of valvular heart disease, there is a need for new integrated valvular treatment options. Traditional treatments for valve disease relied mainly on open heart surgery. Technological advances in percutaneous devices over the past 2decades paved the way for new-generation transcatheter-based approaches for the treatment of valvular disease (Cahill et al., 2018, 2020). Classical open-heart surgery offers unprecedented anatomical access to complex valve pathologies; however, it is complicated by the plethora of risks associated with open surgery. Transcatheter devices obviate the surgical risks of traditional repair and provide an alternative treatment strategy. These seemingly disparate treatment strategies have led to an important clinical question: what is the best strategy to treat valve disease in a patient-specific manner? Numerous trials have explicated the relative pros and cons of open and transcatheter-based techniques and future studies are necessary to identify metrics and algorithms to stratify valve disease in a patient-specific manner.