A heart team's perspective on interventional mitral valve repair: percutaneous clip implantation as an important adjunct to a surgical mitral valve program for treatment of high-risk patients.
OBJECTIVE
Surgical mitral valve repair carries an elevated perioperative risk in the presence of severely reduced ventricular function and relevant comorbidities. We sought to assess the feasibility of catheter-based mitral valve repair using a clip-based percutaneous edge-to-edge repair system in selected patients at high surgical risk with mitral regurgitation grade 3 or worse.


METHODS
Between 2002 and January 2011, 202 consecutive patients without prior mitral valve surgery (age 75 ± 9 years; 63% were male) with symptomatic functional (65%), degenerative (27%), or mixed (8%) mitral regurgitation were treated with a percutaneous clip system for approximation of the anterior and posterior mitral leaflets. Risk for mitral valve surgery was considered high in terms of a mean logistic European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation of 44% (range, 21%-54%). Preprocedural left ventricular ejection fraction was 35% or less in 36% of patients. An interdisciplinary heart team of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons discussed all patients.


RESULTS
Percutaneous clip implantation was successful in 186 patients (92%). Patients were treated with 1 clip (n = 125; 62%), 2 clips (n = 64; 32%), or 3 or more clips (n = 7; 3%). Reduction in mitral regurgitation from pre- to postprocedure was significant (P < .0001) and remained stable within the first 12 months in the majority of patients. Thirty-day mortality was 3.5% (7/202 patients). Hospital stay was 12 ± 10 days, and median intensive care unit stay was 1 day (range, 0-45 days). Eleven patients required surgical valve repair/replacement at a median of 38 days (0-468 days) after percutaneous clip implantation.


CONCLUSIONS
Clip-based percutaneous mitral valve repair is a safe, low-risk, and effective therapeutic option in symptomatic patients with a high risk for surgery and does not exclude later surgical repair.
Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, University Heart Center, Hamburg, Germany. treede@uke.de
Hendrik
H
Treede
Johannes
J
Schirmer
Volker
V
Rudolph
Olaf
O
Franzen
Malgorzata
M
Knap
Michael
M
Schluter
Lenard
L
Conradi
Moritz
M
Seiffert
Dietmar
D
Koschyk
Thomas
T
Meinertz
Stephan
S
Baldus
Hermann
H
Reichenspurner
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D006348:Cardiac Surgical Procedures / Q000379:methods; D003663:Decision Trees; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008943:Mitral Valve / Q000601:surgery*; D008944:Mitral Valve Insufficiency / Q000601:surgery*; D010348:Patient Care Team; D011446:Prospective Studies; D019919:Prosthesis Implantation / Q000379:methods; D012307:Risk Factors