LAUSR

The rapid emergence of transcatheter heart valve therapies for a wide range of valvular heart disease (VHD) substrates has cast renewed spotlight on the VHD landscape. The global burden of VHD is heterogeneous, with rheumatic heart disease being the dominant form of VHD and VHD-related deaths in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, whereas degenerative calcific aortic valve disease and mitral valve disease are predominant in aging, affluent societies in which these populations demonstrate increasing life expectancy. 1 Although access to valve treatment technologies has helped an increasing proportion of patients in Western societies, there remains a considerable lag in the diagnosis and treatment availability in minority populations, including those in whom rheumatic heart disease is prevalent. association, if any, between mild VHD lesions (aortic sclerosis, trace or mild aortic regurgitation, and trace or mild mitral regurgitation) and important clinical end points over a 25-year follow-up period in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a community-based prospective cohort study of 15792 adults from 4