Tricuspid valve disease prevalence and the impact of tricuspid valve surgery on cardiovascular events and hospital resource use in medicare beneficiaries

Tricuspid valve disease (TVD) is presumed common, however, little is known about its prevalence or the impact of tricuspid valve surgery (TVS) on healthcare resource use. To describe the prevalence of TVD and assess the impact of TVS on resource utilization, Medicare Fee-For-Service beneficiaries from 2011 –2019 were assessed for the prevalence of non-rheumatic TVD. Hospital costs and rates of all-cause, cardiovascular (CV), and heart failure (HF) hospitalizations were compared in the 3 months pre TVS to acute (0-3 months) and chronic (3 –12 months) post TVS periods. Among 80.3 million beneficiaries from 2011 – 2019 Q1, over 700,000 (0.9%) had non-rheumatic TVD with 1.4% undergoing TVS. Thirty-day and 1 year mortality after TVS was 5.5% to15.5%. Compared with pre-surgery, CV and HF hospitalizations decreased from 0.12 to 0.08 per patient-month (P