Advances in Mitral Valve Repair

The development of surgical techniques to preserve the diseased mitral valve has challenged surgeons for more than a century. Enhanced understanding of its anatomy, physiology and pathology over the last 50 years have led to rapid development of reproducible, durable techniques for mitral valve repair that apply to almost all mitral valve pathology. Despite this, recent data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons National Cardiac Database documents that only 37.7% of U.S.-based surgeries for mitra1 regurgitation were repairs. The repair rate for patients with combined regurgitation and stenosis fell to 19.7%.1 In contrast, reparative techniques developed in our center have produced a current repair rate in excess of 95% for mitral regurgitation (Figure 1).