Population Insights
TAVR patients at SMC have been overwhelmingly white compared to population demographics.
9.7 percent of the patients who have been treated by TAVR in Spartanburg, Laurens, Union, and Cherokee counties (those whose nearest TAVR option is SMC) have been black. 89.7 percent have been white. This is in stark contrast to the racial demographics of 22.1 percent black and 73.5 percent white of those four counties. This was determined to be statistically significantly different by a chi-square test.
But risk of aortic stenosis is likely equal or greater in blacks.
According to South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), blacks are more than 20 percent more likely to die from heart failure than whites, and heart failure can be one of the fatal outcomes of undiagnosed aortic stenosis.
*See https://scdhec.gov/sites/default/files/Library/CR-004470.pdf