[How to repair a mitral valve prolapse;an assessment of operative techniques dependent on late results]

In this study, we assessed the repair techniques employed for mitral valve prolapse.

Between 1992 and 2011, we repaired 173 consecutive patients with mitral valve prolapse. The mean age of the patients was 60.1 years and 68.6% were male. For anterior leaflet (AL) prolapse, 27 patients with fibroelastic deficiency (FED) were treated with chordal replacement (CR). In 21 patients with Barlow type, 2 were repaired with CR and the remaining 19 were repaired with resection. In 130 patients with a prolapse of the posterior leaflet (PL), we selected quadrangular resection( QR:44), sliding plasty( SP:12), folding plasty and CR. More recently, triangular resection (TrR:22) was selected for ≤18 mm height leaflets, and an hourglass resection( HgR:21) for high leaflets.Hourglass represents the shape of the resection.

In 1 patient of the AL CR group, the expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) was broken. Other patients in this group showed no mitral regurgitation (MR) and no re-operation during 16 years. Two patients receiving CR for AL Barlow received re-repair, whilst the other 19 patients in this group displayed good results over the following 19 years. In the QR and SP groups, 1 patient was rerepaired,whilst 3 patients displayed complicated mitral stenosis. In the TrR and HgR groups, no MR,no re-operation and no late deaths occurred during the following 4.5 years.

CR for AL FED, resection for AL Barlow and TrR or HgR for PL were durable techniques for the treatment of mitral valve prolapse.