Despite recent advances, the selection of appropriate treatment options in patients with mitral regurgitation, especially those with heart failure, represents an important clinical problem. Although mitral regurgitation is an independent predictor of worse prognosis in patients with heart failure, patients are commonly denied cardiac surgery repair procedures, owing to perceived high procedural...

background: about half of all patients who undergo mitral valve surgery suffer from atrial fibrillation (af). cox described the surgical cut-and-sew maze procedure, which is an effective surgical method but has some complications. this study was designed to evaluate the efficacy of a substitution method of radiofrequency ablation (rfa) for patients undergoing mitral valve surgery with af. metho...

Background Transcatheter aortic valves have benefitted from device miniaturization and in-situ assembly to reduce delivery system caliber and enable trans-vascular delivery. In contrast, investigational transcatheter mitral prostheses are bulky devices that require large caliber access ports. Trans-apical delivery is undesirable because of increased morbidity associated with rib spreading, clos...

Percutaneous alternatives to conventional surgery for mitral regurgitation have emerged over the last decade with devices modeled after existing surgical techniques. The most developed of these catheter approaches include leaflet repair and annuloplasty. A device that plicates the free edges of the mitral valve to create a double orifice repair is the only leaflet-repair method in development. ...

Until recently, percutaneous catheter therapy for valvular heart disease was limited to catheter balloon valvuloplasty for aortic, mitral, or pulmonic stenosis. A number of new approaches to percutaneous valve therapy are now developing rapidly, including methods for catheter-based valve replacement and repair. Stent-mounted valve prostheses have been successfully implanted in the pulmonic and ...

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The past 5 years have seen the introduction into the preclinical arena of myriad devices for the potential treatment of functional and ischemic mitral regurgitation by a percutaneous approach.1 A number of the device concepts have taken advantage of the relatively easy access to the posterior annulus of the mitral valve provided by the coronary sinus. Although attractive on initial consideratio...