|
|
||||||||
Ann Thorac Surg 2007;84:745-749
© 2007 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons
a Day General Hospital, Tehran, Iran
b Shariati Hospital, Tehran, Iran
Accepted for publication April 24, 2007.
* Address correspondence to Dr Roshanali, Day General Hospital, Vali Asr Ave, Tehran, 14666, Iran (Email: farideh_roshanali{at}yahoo.com).
| Abstract |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Methods: This is a prospective study of 114 patients with 3+ to 4+ IMR who underwent coronary artery bypass grafting and mitral valve annuloplasty with acceptable results at an approximately 2-year follow-up. Variables were compared in a failure group, comprising patients with 2+ or higher MR and a nonfailure group, consisting of those with less than +2 MR.
Results: There were five postoperative in-hospital deaths. During follow-up, 14 patients died and 95 patients were evaluated. After a mean follow-up of 22.2 ± 4.6 months for the nonfailure group and 18.6 ± 5.6 months for the failure group, 23 patients (24.4%) exhibited annuloplasty failure. Some variables had an effect in our univariate analysis, but only interpapillary muscle distance had a relationship with recurrent MR in the multivariate analysis. Mean preoperative interpapillary muscle distance was 15.0 ± 4.0 and 26.5 ± 2.9 in the nonfailure group and failure group, respectively (p < 0.0001).
Conclusions: Interpapillary muscle distance, as a reliable index of dysfunctional subvalvular apparatus in patients with IMR, can predict late postrepair MR and indicate the need for a procedure complementary to annuloplasty.
| Introduction |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Although a number of techniques for IMR have been developed, none has resulted in clearly improved outcomes [1]. The most common surgical procedure currently performed for IMR is mitral annuloplasty, which involves the insertion of an artificial or pericardial ring. The initial results of mitral annuloplasty seemed encouraging, with low perioperative mortality rates, but subsequent studies revealed that recurrent MR developed in as many as 30% of patients during follow-up [3–5].
This high MR recurrence rate associated with mitral annuloplasty has led a number of investigators to examine alternative or additional surgical therapies. The phenomenon of "tethering," in which the mitral valve leaflet is pulled toward the left ventricle apex, begets MR; therefore, additional surgical procedures such as papillary muscle approximation (PMA) [6], cutting the secondary chordae of the anterior leaflet of the mitral valve [7], anterior leaflet augmentation [8], and relocation of the posterior papillary muscle [9] have been evolved to reduce or eradicate tethering and, consequently, to control regurgitation.
What remains to be clearly defined, however, is which cases of IMR should undergo one of these complementary procedures. Mitral annuloplasty is believed to be safe and effective in approximately 70% to 80% of patients, but how can we single out the remaining unlucky ones before surgery? To find an answer to this question, we sought to evaluate the predicting factors for IMR recurrence after ring annuloplasty.
| Material and Methods |
|---|
|
|
|---|
The patients were evaluated with intraoperative postcardiopulmonary bypass pump (CPB) transesophageal echocardiography (post-CPB TEE); 114 of these patients, whose acceptable postoperative results (0+ or 1+ MR) were later confirmed by predischarge transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), were enrolled in this study. The rest of the patients, who did not show acceptable results, underwent additional procedures, including even mitral valve replacement, if necessary. Excluded were candidates for other surgical procedures and patients with structural causes for MR, including ruptured chordae, ruptured papillary muscle, abnormal leaflet thickening, and annular calcification, as well as patients who had had a MI less than 6 weeks previously, ventricular aneurysms or other valvular or congenital heart diseases. This research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Day General Hospital.
Study Design
In this prospective study, all the patients underwent a baseline TTE before surgery. The results were reconfirmed by intraoperative pre-CPB TEE, performed after the induction of surgical anesthesia and before the surgical incision. Preoperative New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class and variables that could predict late MR, such as ejection fraction (EF), severity of MR, coaptation depth, concavity area, end-systolic volume, end-diastolic volume, sphericity index, posterior papillary muscle–to–intervalvular fibrosa distance, and interpapillary muscle distance (iPMD), were registered.
Our general policy was to intervene in cases with chronic moderate-to-severe or severe IMR (3+, 4+). After CABG with mitral annuloplasty, an intraoperative post-CPB TEE evaluation revealed acceptable results in all the cases: there was no MR or trace MR and the coaptation line was more than 6 mm. A predischarge reevaluation later on confirmed the successful result of repair in all the patients. The patients were, thereafter, rigorously followed up for approximately 2 years to check whether they showed failure of mitral annuloplasty with significant late MR. Significant MR was defined MR of 2+ or more after surgery. The variables were determined every 6 months postoperatively by another clinical evaluation in conjunction with TTE.
Echocardiography
In this prospective study, all the echocardiograms were obtained by 2 cardiologists. The mitral annulus was measured in the 4-chamber and 2-chamber views at end-systole, and the mean value was taken into account. The estimation of the MR grade on TTE was based on the vena contracta of the regurgitant jet [10]. Vena contracta, measured by Doppler color flow imaging, is the narrowest portion of the regurgitant jet (vena contracta width <3 mm, 1+ 3 to 5mm, 2+ 5 to 8 mm, 3+ >8mm, 4+). The highest grade of MR observed preoperatively was used to classify the patients. The 2 observers reached a consensus.
The characteristics of the tethering pattern of the mitral valve were assessed by means of the following indices (all the measurements were performed at end-systole):
|
The size of the mitral annuloplasty ring (Carpentier Edwards Physio Ring, Edwards Lifesciences, Irving, CA) was decided by a standard measurement of the intertrigonal distance and anterior leaflet height, thereupon downsizing by two ring sizes was done. The rings were subsequently anchored using multiple, deep U-shaped stitches of Ethibond 2-0 (Ethicon, Inc, Somerville, NJ). All the rings were size 28 or less (mean size, 26).
The post-CPB surgical results were evaluated by TEE. Because previous studies stress that intraoperative TEE downgrades MR [11], we did intraoperative TEE after provocative testing so that we could increase both preload and afterload, clarify the physiological severity of the MR, and facilitate intraoperative decision-making.
Medication
All the patients were receiving ß-blockers and aspirin. Other medications were administered if the need arose.
Follow-Up
All the patients were followed up at our outpatient clinic every 6 months by TTE performed by the same cardiologists. Follow-up was 100% complete.
Statistical Analysis
Data are presented as mean ± standard deviation, percentage, and total number, as appropriate. The association between the quantitative data was found with a two-tailed unpaired t test. The
2 test or Fisher exact test was applied to compare the categoric variables. The Cox regression analysis was used to evaluate the independent risk factors for significant late MR. All the independent variables were included in the model before the backward method, and a value of p < 0.05 was used to select variables for the model. The statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 13.0 software (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL). A value of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
| Results |
|---|
|
|
|---|
The mean age of the patients was 54.6 ± 11.3 years and 74 (77.9%) were men. MR was at grade 3 in 29 patients (30.5%) and at grade 4 in 66 (69.5%). The subjects had a mean iPMD of 17.3 ± 6.0 mm, annular size of 38.3 ± 3.1 mm, coaptation depth of 8.8 ± 1.8 mm, concavity area of 38.1 ± 11.1 mm2, EF of 0.380 ± 0.062, and LV end-systolic volume of 93.0 ± 23.7 mL. All the patients were in NYHA functional class 3 or 4.
After a mean follow-up of 22.2 ± 4.6 months for the nonfailure group (range, 6 to 30 months) and 18.6 ± 5.6 months for the failure group (range, 6 to 24 months), 23 patients (24.4%) showed annuloplasty failure with MR of 2+ or more.
Table 1 summarizes the univariate analysis of the characteristics and preoperative echocardiographic data in the failure and nonfailure groups. In the univariate analysis, failure was related to iPMD, coaptation depth, concavity area, end-diastolic diameter, and sphericity index.
|
Table 1 demonstrates no difference between the two groups in terms of the number of vessel diseases (2.35 ± 0.65 in group I, 2.43 ± 0.66 in group II, p < 0.578), the number of grafts (3.92 ± 0.82 in group I, 4.00 ± 0.60 in group II, p < 0.653) for each patient, and the mean size of the rings (27.6 ± 1.4 in group I, 2.7.7 ± 1.4 in group II, p < 0.704).
All the patients had a history of MI. In both groups, inferior MI was more frequent than anterior infarction, without significant differences between the two groups (Table 1).
As demonstrated in Table 1, preoperative and postoperative end-diastolic and end-systolic volumes and sphericity indices were not different between the two groups.
Additional procedures were done in 7 patients (mean age, 60.9 ± 9.3 years) who did not show acceptable results after repai, which led to mitral valve replacement in 5. Everyones iPMD was more than 20, with a mean iPMD of 27.7 ± 3.6 (range, 22 to 32). They had a mean annular size of 41.1 ± 3.2, coaptation depth of 10.9 ± 1.9, concavity area of 48.0 ± 5.1, LV end-diastolic volume of 109.9 ± 32.1, and NYHA of 3.71 ± 0.49, which were more than those in the nonfailure group. However, they had MR before surgery and their EFs were the same as the other group.
Figure 2 shows a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis of iPMD, in which the optimal cutoff value for iPMD is 20. This cutoff value yielded a sensitivity of 95.7% and a specificity of 97.2%. The area under the ROC curve is 0.994 ± 0.005.
|
| Comment |
|---|
|
|
|---|
We know, however, that the components of the mitral apparatus belong to a single functional unit; thus, normal mitral valve function requires the coordinated operation of all the components, including the annulus, leaflets, chordae tendinea, and PMs [1]. LV distortion and remodeling after MI displaces PMs from the mitral annulus [12–14]; this displacement puts excessive tension on the chordae and results both in the tethering of the apical mitral leaflets and in restricting their coaptation during systole [13, 15–18]. As a consequence, the further the PMs are displaced, the less the mitral leaflets coapt. The measurement of the iPMD, therefore, finds application as a quantitative index of the tethering phenomenon in evaluating the remodeling process.
We followed up patients after ring annuloplasty in an attempt to evaluate predicting factors of IMR recurrence. Surprisingly, 2.8% of the patients in our nonfailure group and 95.7% of the patients in the failure group had preoperative iPMD of more than 20 mm. This finding strongly supports the hypothesis that increased iPMD can determine patients with a higher likelihood of MR recurrence.
Agricola and coworkers [19] ingeniously used mitral deformation indices and PM displacement to evaluate chronic IMR and discovered that all of these variables had a significant tendency to change in patients with IMR [19].
Our data tally with those reported by Calafiore and colleagues [20, 21], who introduced an index—the mitral valve coaptation depth—for predicting the return of functional MR after annuloplasty. Having performed mitral valve repair in a group of patients with an mitral valve coaptation depth of 11 mm or more, Calafiore and colleagues reported that postoperative NYHA functional class had remained similar to the preoperative one and that the residual functional MR degree had been higher than that in another group of patients (1.2 ± 0.8 versus 2.5 ± 0.7, p < 0.001) [7]. Mitral valve coaptation depth is, undoubtedly, a reliable index of MR recurrence (p < 0.01); however, we are inclined to believe that iPMD is a more accurate index (p < 0.001).
Braun and colleagues [22], in an excellent study, found end-diastolic volume of great significance in predicting the possibility of IMR recurrence after annuloplasty remodeling. In our study, as much as a univariate analysis showed the effects of certain variables such as end-diastolic volume and coaptation depth, a multivariate analysis was indicative of a relationship only between recurrent MR and iPMD.
Kuwahara and colleagues [23] evaluated the effect of tethering variables in late MR after annuloplasty and found that mitral annuloplasty was not sufficient when the tethering of the leaflets was more than the anterior leaflet surface. They suggested that in this situation, we need interventions addressing ventricular tethering or interventions addressing PM tethering to reduce the risk of late MR.
Leaflet tethering, caused by ventricular remodeling, is compounded by LV contractile dysfunction, which decreases the closing force on the leaflets [17]. According to Laplaces law (pressure is proportional to wall stress divided by radius of curvature), once IMR is initiated, end-diastolic LV volume and wall stress increase in tandem with preload [18, 24, 25]. The increase in wall stress causes further LV dysfunction [26], which in turn gives rise to further PM displacement and leaflet tethering. Chronic IMR therefore begets MR in a self-perpetuating manner [1]. Recurrent MR after an initially successful mitral annuloplasty may be related to continuing PM displacement, which augments the tethering on the leaflets deranging once again the ratio between the mitral orifice and covering surface of the mitral leaflets [3, 27].
The above-mentioned studies and our new finding that ventricular remodeling triggers a gradual increase in iPMD strongly support the notion that the main mechanism of IMR in most cases is tethering begotten by PM displacement. The gradual displacement of PMs perpetuates tethering and restricts the movement of the anterior leaflet, reducing coaptation and increasing regurgitation. Preoperative iPMD could, therefore, be a clue to the amount of initial tethering induced by PM displacement; if it is more than 20 mm, not only are the abnormalities in the subvalvular apparatus and the resultant tethering far too advanced to be treated by ring annuloplasty alone but it also triggers the recurrence of MR after mitral annuloplasty. Here, an additional procedure that can directly address the subvalvular apparatus is required to prevent or at least delay the recurrence of MR. Conversely, if tethering is not strong enough (low iPMD) to restrict the motion of the anterior leaflet, posterior ring annuloplasty alone can successfully impede the recurrence of IMR.
In conclusion, our prospective study shows that iPMD is a crucial index for determining whether MR might recur (if iPMD is high) after posterior annuloplasty. This prediction is potentially helpful in deciding whether to perform annulolasty alone if iPMD is 20 mm or less or resort to a complementary procedure if iPMD exceeds 20 mm).
| References |
|---|
|
|
|---|
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
F. Onorati, A. S. Rubino, D. Marturano, E. Pasceri, G. Santarpino, S. Zinzi, G. Mascaro, and A. Renzulli Midterm clinical and echocardiographic results and predictors of mitral regurgitation recurrence following restrictive annuloplasty for ischemic cardiomyopathy J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg., September 1, 2009; 138(3): 654 - 662. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
F. Onorati, A. S. Rubino, D. Marturano, E. Pasceri, G. Mascaro, S. Zinzi, F. Serraino, and A. Renzulli Mid-term echocardiographic results with different rings following restrictive mitral annuloplasty for ischaemic cardiomiopathy Eur. J. Cardiothorac. Surg., August 1, 2009; 36(2): 250 - 260. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
H. Suma, H. Tanabe, T. Uejima, T. Isomura, and T. Horii Surgical ventricular restoration combined with mitral valve procedure for endstage ischemic cardiomyopathy Eur. J. Cardiothorac. Surg., August 1, 2009; 36(2): 280 - 285. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
F. Onorati, G. Santarpino, D. Marturano, A. S. Rubino, E. Pasceri, S. Zinzi, G. Mascaro, L. Cristodoro, and A. Renzulli Successful surgical treatment of chronic ischemic mitral regurgitation achieves left ventricular reverse remodeling but does not affect right ventricular function. J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg., August 1, 2009; 138(2): 341 - 351. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
E. C. McGee Jr Surgery, Mitral Regurgitation, and Heart Failure: The Valves Are All Repairable But the Patients Are Not Circ Heart Fail, November 1, 2008; 1(4): 285 - 289. [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
G. D'Ancona, D. Biondo, G. Mamone, G. Marrone, F. Pirone, G. Santise, S. Sciacca, and M. Pilato Ischemic mitral valve regurgitation in patients with depressed ventricular function: cardiac geometrical and myocardial perfusion evaluation with magnetic resonance imaging Eur. J. Cardiothorac. Surg., November 1, 2008; 34(5): 964 - 968. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
C. A. Milano, M. A. Daneshmand, J. S. Rankin, E. Honeycutt, M. L. Williams, M. Swaminathan, L. Linblad, L. K. Shaw, D. D. Glower, and P. K. Smith Survival Prognosis and Surgical Management of Ischemic Mitral Regurgitation Ann. Thorac. Surg., September 1, 2008; 86(3): 735 - 744. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |
| ANN THORAC SURG | ASIAN CARDIOVASC THORAC ANN | EUR J CARDIOTHORAC SURG |
| J THORAC CARDIOVASC SURG | ICVTS | ALL CTSNet JOURNALS |