Depth of anaesthesia in patients undergoing transfemoral transcatheter aortic valve implantation with ‘conscious sedation and local anaesthesia’—a secondary exploratory analysis of the randomised SOLVE-TAVI trial

Editor-Transfemoral transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) has become the standard of care for older patients with symptomatic, severe aortic stenosis 1 and is increasingly performed under local anaesthesia with conscious sedation (LA-CS). 2 The randomised multicentre SOLVE-TAVI trial in 447 patients with severe aortic stenosis undergoing TAVI revealed that general anaesthesia (GA) or LA-CS resulted in similar short-and long-term outcomes with respect to a combined primary endpoint including all-cause mortality, stroke, myocardial infarction, acute kidney injury, and infection mandating antibiotic treatment. [3][4]][5] As a part of the study protocol, anaesthesia depth during the intervention was continuously monitored with the bispectral index (BIS, Covidien-Medtronic, Minneapolis, MN,