International Circulation: You have presented the speech “Percutaneous and Trans-apical Aortic Valve Replacement in Aortic Stenosis-Update 2009” at this conference. What are the potential complications associated with TAVI and which risk factors may help to predict the occurrence of complications?

Gerhard Schuler:  The acute complications and procedural complications are very rare.  There are only about 1-2% incidence of complications mainly related to the trauma to the heart like perforation of the left ventricle， emboli， or some other trauma to the vessels down in the pelvic area.  These complications， as I said， are rare， occurring in about 2% of patients maximum.  More complications arise during the 30 days following the procedure and these are mainly related to the co-morbidities of the patients.  Most of these patients are over 80 years of age and have a number of other serious co-morbidities such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)， renal failure， poor ALV function， and these complications are related to the co-morbidities.