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The COVID-19 pandemic has strained health care resources around the
world causing many institutions to curtail or stop elective procedures.
This has resulted in the inability to care for patients valvular and
structural heart disease (SHD) in a timely fashion potentially placing
these patients at increased risk for adverse cardiovascular
complications including congestive heart failure and death. The
effective triage of these patients has become challenging in the current
environment as clinicians have had to weigh the risk of bringing
susceptible patients into the hospital environment during the COVID-19
pandemic versus the risk of delaying a needed procedure. In this
document, we suggest guidelines as to how to triage patients in need of
SHD interventions and provide a framework of how to decide when it may
be appropriate to proceed with intervention despite the ongoing
pandemic. In particular, we address the triage of patients in need of
trans-catheter aortic valve replacement and percutaneous mitral valve
repair. We also address procedural issues and considerations for the
function of structural heart disease teams during the COVID-19 pandemic.