Coronary sinus dilatation. A simple additional echocardiographic indicator of severe rheumatic mitral and tricuspid valve disease.
OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the usefulness of examining the coronary sinus (CS) anatomic diameter as an additional surrogate marker of severity in chronic rheumatic valve disease (RVD).


METHODS
In this cross-sectional observational study, we echocardiographically analyzed 88 patients with RVD, and 104 normal subjects in the Department of Cardiology, Gaziantep University Medical Faculty, Gaziantep, Turkey between February 2007 and April 2007. Echocardiographically all valve regurgitation, stenosis, left ventricular function, left/right atrial volume, and pulmonary artery pressure were obtained. Coronary sinus was assessed as a sonolucency in the posterior atrioventricular groove.


RESULTS
Strong positive correlation was present between CS measurements and mitral mean gradient, mitral and tricuspid regurgitation grade, tricuspid stenosis gradient, pulmonary artery systolic pressure, left and right atrial volume, and New York Heart Association class. A statistically negative correlation was present between CS measurements and mitral valve area and ejection fraction. Only the mitral valve area, tricuspid regurgitation grade, and the right atrial volume were predictors of body surface area adjusted mean CS dilatation.


CONCLUSIONS
In this preliminary study, we showed that echocardiographic assessment of dilated CS may provide useful additional information in predicting the severity of mitral/tricuspid RVD. Findings of this study needs to be confirmed in further studies.
Kizilkan
Nese
N
Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, School of Medicine, Gaziantep University, Gaziantep TR 27310, Turkey. kizilkan@gantep.edu.tr
Davutoglu
Vedat
V
Erbagci
Hulya
H
Karagoz
Alper
A
Akcay
Murat
M
Sari
Ibrahim
I
Ercan
Suleyman
S
Dogan
Adnan
A
D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004452:Echocardiography; D005260:Female; D006349:Heart Valve Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008943:Mitral Valve / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D012214:Rheumatic Heart Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D014261:Tricuspid Valve / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*