Mitral regurgitation is the most common cardiac valve disease, with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR) is used as a promising intervention in non-surgical patients and in those with unsuitable anatomy for transcatheter edge-to-edge repair. TMVR can also be performed for inoperable or high-risk patients with degenerated or failed bioporstheses or failed repairs, or in patients with severe annular calcifications. The complex anatomy of the mitral valves makes the design of transcatheter mitral valve prostheses extremely challenging, and increases the difficulty of TMVR procedure, thus could led to non-negligible complications including periprocedural and post-procedural long-term complications. This review aims to discuss the potential TMVR-complications and measures implemented to mitigate these complications, in order to improve the prognosis of TMVR patients.
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.
Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) is a relatively common hereditary cardiomyopathy, which is featured by asymmetric myocardial hypertrophy and dynamic left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) obstruction. Other than septal hypertrophy, mitral valve abnormalities are also quite common in HOCM patients, and they also contribute to systolic anterior motion of the mitral leaflets and LVOT obstruction. Septal myectomy is believed as the standard surgical treatment for HOCM, but whether to perform mitral valve procedures at the same time of myectomy is still debatable. In this article, we thoroughly explained the mitral valve abnormalities in HOCM patients and their surgical corrections. Besides, we also explained the controversies over mitral valve procedures based on the current clinical studies.
Over the past 20 years, transcatheter mitral valve edge-to-edge repair (TEER) has become an important treatment option for patients with severe mitral regurgitation (MR) who are at high surgical risk. Initially, several landmark clinical studies established the basis of TEER for primary and secondary MR, but they only involved clinically stable patients with appropriate mitral valve anatomy. With the increasing experience of interventional therapy, the iteration of equipment and the improvement of intraoperative imaging technology, the scope of use of TEER has been continuously expanded, and its indications have been continuously expanded to more complex mitral valve lesions and clinical situations. Therefore, in clinical practice, selecting the appropriate device according to the individual anatomical characteristics of the patient can minimize MR and complications, thereby optimizing immediate and long-term prognosis. This article mainly introduces the pathogenesis and related mechanisms of MR, the main TEER devices and their clinical evidence, the limitations of TEER, and the future development direction.
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.
In recent years, transcatheter mitral valve replacement is a focused issue in the field of valve intervention, which brings hope to mitral regurgitation patients who are not suitable for surgical thoracotomy. This paper presents the case of echocardiography-guided transseptal mitral valve replacement with the HighLife system in an elderly female patient with severe mitral regurgitation who failed to respond to standard medical therapy. During the procedure, echocardiography was used to guide the wire looping, cinching, atrial septal puncture, ring closure, atrial septal balloon dilatation, prosthetic valve implantation and immediate postoperative evaluation. Echocardiography plays an important role in transseptal mitral valve replacement, which can help the procedural process and improve the safety of the procedure.
Artificial chord is a mature mitral valve repair technique, especially in adult mitral valve repair. It is still challenging to repair mitral valve in children with artificial chords because the quality of mitral valve is soft and immature. There are some differences in the methods of suture, the choice of suture size and the number of artificial chords. Although the artificial chords could not grow naturally, we found through the long-term research that most children did not have mitral valve restriction or even chords rupture due to itself can compensate through the growth of the flap and papillary muscle. This article summarizes the recent research progress on the treatment of mitral valve insufficiency in children with artificial chords, providing reference for clinical treatment.
Objective To evaluate a score system to allow stratification of complexity in degenerative mitral valve repair. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the clinical data of 312 consecutive patients who underwent surgery for mitral valve repair and whose preoperative echocardiography was referable in our hospital from January 2012 to December 2013. A scoring system for surgical complexity was used based mainly on the preoperative echocardiography findings. Complexity of mitral valve repair was scored as 1 to 9, and patients were categorized into 3 groups based on the score for surgical complexity: a simple group (1 point), an intermediate group (2-4 points) and a complex group (≥5 points). There were 86 males and 35 females in the simple group (n=121) with an average age of 51.6±12.6 years, 105 males and 53 females in the intermediate group (n=158) with an average age of 51.1±12.8 years and 25 males and 8 females in the complex group (n=33) with an average age of 49.3±13.0 years. Results There was significant difference in surgical complexity in different groups. In the simple, intermediate and complex groups, the mean cardiopulmonary bypass time was 111.7±45.5 min, 117.7±40.4 min and 153.4±74.2 min (P<0.001), the mean cross-clamping time was 77.5±33.8 min, 83.2±29.9 min and 108.8±56.2 min (P<0.001), and the mean number of repair techniques utilized was 2.1±0.4, 2.4±0.6 and 2.8±0.8 (P<0.001). However, there was no significant difference in the early and late outcomes in different groups. Conclusion It is feasible to use echocardiography to quantitatively evaluate the difficulty of mitral valvuloplasty.
Mitral regurgitation (MR) is the most common valvular heart disease, however, majority of patients are not suitable for open heart surgery due to comorbidity such as organ and heart dysfunction. Transcatheter edge-to-edge mitral valve repair has become an effective treatment option for high-risk patients with MR. Two patients were enrolled in this study inlcuding one 60-year degenerative mitral regurgitation patient and one 72-year functional mitral regurgitation patient. Transcatheter repair procedure was successfully done for the two patients without postoperative complication.
Mitral regurgitation has high morbidity and mortality. The application of transcatheter edge-to-edge mitral valve repair (TEER) has provided more options for the management of primary and secondary mitral regurgitation. With the accumulation of operator experience, the improvement of equipment, and the optimization of intraoperative imaging, TEER can be applied to more complex or critically ill patients. The incidence of TEER-related adverse events is low, but some complications that may occur are potentially dangerous. TEER-related complications and their treatment methods are the guarantee of safe and effective operation. This article discusses the main possible complications of TEER and the corresponding management strategies.