Survival After Open Versus Endovascular Thoracic Aortic Aneurysm Repair in an Observational Study of the Medicare Population

Although perioperative mortality is lower with TEVAR, Medicare patients selected for TEVAR have worse long-term survival than patients selected for open repair. The results of this observational study suggest that higher-risk patients are being offered TEVAR and that some do not benefit on the basis of long-term survival. Future work is needed to identify TEVAR candidates unlikely to benefit from repair.