ObjectiveTo evaluate the safety and efficacy of transapical mitral valve repair with moderate-to-severe or severe mitral regurgitation (MR) by using LifeClip system. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 7 symptomatic patients with moderate-to-severe or severe MR who received transapical mitral valve repair by using the LifeClip system in our hospital from July to November 2021. There were 5 males and 2 females with an average age of 76.0±7.5 years. ResultsThere were 2 patients with degenerative MR and 5 patients with functional MR. All of the procedures were successful and 6 patients received 1 LifeClip while the other one patient received 2. The operation time was 135.7±46.9 min, the mechanical ventilation time was 12 (3, 14) h, and the hospital stay time was 18.1±4.1 d. No serious complications or death occurred during the perioperative or follow-up period. MR reduction by ≥2 grades was achieved in all the patients at the one-month follow-up. The classification of cardiac function was improved in varying degrees. Conclusion Transapical mitral valve repair using the LifeClip system shows good safety and efficacy for severe MR patients, and MR degree is significantly improved at early follow-up. However, the benefit of LifeClip should be validated in a larger sample size of Chinese population and through long-term follow-up.
ObjectiveTo investigate the risk or protective factors for systemic embolism (SE) in patients undergoing bioprosthetic mitral valve replacement (MVR). Methods Between October 2002 and March 2013, a total of 146 patients underwent bioprosthetic MVR. There were 78 females and 68 males with mean age of 66.23±5.17 years. The primary reason of mitral valve disease was mitral valve degeneration or mitral valve leaflet prolapse in 40 patients, rheumatic heart valve disease in 101 patients, ischemic heart disease in 3 patients, infectious endocarditis in 1 patient, and mechanical peri-valvular leak in 1 patient. All patients were given anticoagulation therapy with warfarin for 3 months. Thereafter, antithrombotic medication was prescribed according to the surgeon's preference. The patients were followed up by telephone or mail for postoperative condition and SE events. ResultsSixteen (10.96%) patients developed SE events, including cerebral infarction in 13 cases, transient ischemic attack (TIA) in 2 cases and spleen infarction in 1 case. A total of 16 patients died during follow-up. The 1-year, 3-year, 5-year and 10-year cumulative survival rate after surgery was 95.2%, 93.6%, 92.5% and 88.3% respectively. Patients with SE events had lower rate of left atrial appendage obliteration than those without SE events (25.0% vs. 78.6%, P=0.015). Multivariate analysis showed that left atrial appendage obliteration was an independent protective factor for SE in patients undergoing bioprosthetic MVR (P=0.041). ConclusionLeft atrial appendage obliteration is a major protective factor for systemic embolism in patients undergoing bioprosthetic MVR no matter what antithrombotic medication is taken.
Objective To compare the effect of palliative mitral valve surgeries and medication therapies for secondary non-ischemic mitral regurgitation. Methods The clinical data of patients with non-ischemic functional mitral regurgitation treated in our hospital between 2009 and 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. Patients with a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF)＜40% underwent a dobutamine stress test, and a positive result was determined when the LVEF improved by more than 15% compared to the baseline value. Positive patients were divided into a surgery group and a medication group. The surgery group underwent surgical mitral valve repair or replacement, while the medication group received simple medication treatment. Follow-up on survival and cardiac function status through outpatient or telephone visits every six months after surgery, and patients underwent cardiac ultrasound examination one year after surgery. The main research endpoint was a composite endpoint of all-cause death, heart failure readmission, and heart transplantation, and the differences in cardiac function and cardiac ultrasound parameters between the two groups were compared. ResultsUltimately 41 patients were collected, including 28 males and 13 females with an average age of 55.5±11.1 years. Twenty-five patients were in the surgery group and sixteen patients in the medication group. The median follow-up time was 16 months, ranging 1-96 months. The occurrence of all-cause death in the surgery group was lower than that in the medication group (HR=0.124, 95%CI 0.024-0.641, P=0.034). The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant in the composite endpoint (HR=0.499, 95%CI 0.523-1.631, P=0.229). The New York Heart Association (NYHA) grade of the surgery group was better (NYHA Ⅰ-Ⅱ accounted for 68.0% in the surgury group and 18.8% in the medication group, P<0.01) as well as the grade of mitral valve regurgitation (87.5% of the patients in the medication group had moderate or above regurgitation at follow-up, while all the patients in the surgery group had moderate below regurgitation, P<0.01). There was no statistical difference in preoperative and follow-up changes in echocardiograph parameters between the two groups (P＞0.05). Conclusion For non-ischemic functional mitral regurgitation, if the cardiac systolic function is well reserved, mitral valve surgery can improve survival and quality of life compare to simple medication therapy.
Minimally invasive cardiac surgeries are the trend in the future. Among them, robotic cardiac surgery is the latest iteration with several key-hole incision, 3-dimentional visualization, and articulated instrumentation of 7 degree of ergonomic freedom for those complex procedures in the heart. In particular, robotic mitral valve surgery, as well as coronary artery bypass grafting, has evolved over the last decade and become the preferred method at certain specialized centers worldwide because of excellent results. Other cardiac procedures are in various stages of evolution. Stepwise innovation of robotic technology will continue to make robotic operations simpler, more efficient, and less invasive, which will encourage more surgeons to take up this technology and extend the benefits of robotic surgery to a larger patient population.
Objective To investigate the clinical efficacy of mitral valve repair technique in the treatment of rheumatic mitral valve lesions. Methods The clinical data of patients diagnosed with rheumatic mitral valve lesions and undergoing mitral valve repair under extracorporeal circulation in our department from 2021 to 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. Results A total of 100 patients were collected, including 78 females and 22 males with an average age of 52 years. There were no secondary open heart or death in the whole group. Extracorporeal circulation time was 136.3±33.1 min, aortic cross-clamping time was 107.6±27.5 min, ventilator use time was 12.9±5.9 h, ICU stay was 2.6±1.4 d, and vasoactive medication use was 823.4±584.4 mg. Before and after the surgery, there were statistical differences in the left ventricular end diastolic diameter, left atrial end systolic diameter, effective mitral valve orifice area, shortening rate of left ventricular short axis, mitral E-peak blood flow velocity, mean mitral transvalvular pressure difference, mitral pressure half-time, and cardiac function graded by New York Heart Association (P＜0.05). While there was no statistical difference in left ventricular ejection fraction or left ventricular end-diastolic volume (P>0.05). Conclusion Overall repair of rheumatic mitral valve lesions can significantly improve the cardiac function and hemodynamics of the patients, and is a good choice for patients with rheumatic mitral valve lesions.
Mitral valve disease is one of the most popular heart valve diseases. Precise positioning and displaying of the valve characteristics is necessary for the minimally invasive mitral valve repairing procedures. This paper presents a multi-resolution elastic registration method to compute the deformation functions constructed from cubic B-splines in three dimensional ultrasound images, in which the objective functional to be optimized was generated by maximum likelihood method based on the probabilistic distribution of the ultrasound speckle noise. The algorithm was then applied to register the mitral valve voxels. Numerical results proved the effectiveness of the algorithm.
Objective To analyze the echocardiographic characteristics of above grade 3+ mitral regurgitation (MR) patients by 3D transesophageal echocardiography (3D-TEE) in transcatheter edge-to-edge repair (TEER) and compare the intervention rate of TEER treatment in patients with different risk stratification. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 91 patients with above grade 3+ MR in Anzhen Hospital between June 2021 and April 2022. There were 45 males and 46 females aged 66.5±15.9 years. According to pathogenesis, the patients were divided into different anatomical groups and risk stratification groups. There were 34 patients in a simple degenerative group (simple DMR group), 28 patietns in a complex disease group (Complex group), 14 patients in a simple ventricular functional reflux group (simple VFMR group), 9 patients in a simple atrial functional reflux group (simple AFMR group), and 6 patients in a mixed functional reflux group (mixed FMR group). All patients were examined with a unified standard of transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) and 3D-TEE to compare the characteristic three-dimensional structural changes of the mitral valve in each group. According to the three partition strategy of preoperative anatomical evaluation of TEER, the risk stratification was conducted for the enrolled patients, which was divided into three regions from light to heavy: green area, yellow area, and red area. TEER treatment intervention rate of patients with different risk stratification was calculated. Results Ant leaf angle and post leaf angle were negative in the simple DMR and Complex groups, and non-planar angle, prolapse height and prolapse volume were higher than those of the other groups (P=0.000). Ant leaf angle and post leaf angle were positive in the VFMR group and the mixed FMR group. Anterior and posterior (AP) diameter of valve ring (P=0.036), tenting height and tenting volume were higher than those of other groups (P=0.000). AP diameter, tenting height and tenting volume were changed mildly in patients with simple AFMR. MR patients in red and yellow zone achieved a 28.1% TEER intervention rate.Conclusion Standardized TTE and TEE examinations are crucial for the qualitative and quantitative diagnosis of MR in the echo core-lab. 3D-TEE mitral valve parameter can help determine the exact pathogenesis of MR and to improve the interventional rate of challenging MR patients.
Mitral valve disease is the most common cardiac valve disease. The main treatment of mitral valve disease is surgery or interventional therapy. However, as the anatomy of mitral valve is complicated, the operation is particularly difficult. As a result, it requires sophisticated experiences for surgeons. Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology can transform two-dimensional medical images into 3D solid models. So it can provide clear spatial anatomical information and offer safe and personalized treatment for the patients by simulating surgery process. This article reviews the applications of 3D printing technology in the treatment of mitral valve disease.
ObjectiveTo examine the safety, efficacy and durability of totally endoscopic minimally invasive (TEMI) mitral valve repair in Barlow’s disease (BD). MethodsA retrospective study was performed on patients who underwent mitral valve repair for BD from January 2010 to June 2021 in the Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital. The patients were divided into a MS group and a TEMI group according to the surgery approaches. A comparison of the clinical data between the two groups was conducted. ResultsA total of 196 patients were enrolled, including 133 males and 63 females aged (43.8±14.9) years. There were 103 patients in the MS group and 93 patients in the TEMI group. No hospital death was observed. There was a higher percentage of artificial chordae implantation in the TEMI group compared to the MS group (P=0.020), but there was no statistical difference between the two groups in the other repair techniques (P>0.05). Although the total operation time between the two groups was not statistically different (P=0.265), the TEMI group had longer cardiopulmonary bypass time (P<0.001) and aortic clamp time (P<0.001), and shorter mechanical ventilation time (P<0.001) and postoperative hospitalization time (P<0.001). No statistical difference between the two groups in the adverse perioperative complications (P>0.05). The follow-up rate was 94.2% (180/191) with a mean time of 0.2-12.4 (4.0±2.4) years. Two patients in the MS group died with non-cardiac reasons during the follow-up period. The 3-year, 5-year and 10-year overall survival rates of all patients were 100.0%, 99.2%, 99.2%, respectively. Compared with the MS group, there was no statistical difference in the survival rate, recurrence rate of mitral regurgitation, reoperation rate of mitral valve or adverse cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events in the TEMI group (P＞0.05). ConclusionTEMI approach is a safe, feasible and effective approach for BD with a satisfying long-term efficacy.
Ischemic mitral regurgitation represents a common complication after myocardial infarction, the severity of the mitral regurgitation increases the risk of mortality. There is continuing debate regarding the management of moderate ischemic mitral regurgitation in patients undergoing surgical management. The debates lie in whether adding mitral valve surgery to coronary artery bypass grafting. So the review is about the analysis of existing evidence and expectation about it.