Background
Mitral regurgitation (MR) is the most common valvular heart disease.
Since delaying severe MR treatment can lead to left ventricular
dysfunction, early MR diagnosis is crucial. Echocardiography is the
first-line diagnostic modality for evaluating MR severity.
Transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) and newer imaging modalities like
cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) are growing to be used due to
the pitfalls of transthoracic echocardiography (TTE). However, these
newer modalities have disadvantages, such as high cost, requiring
highly-skilled operators, and expensive devices, that make them not
widely available in developing countries.
We evaluated novel TTE-derived hemodynamic burden parameters of MR to
estimate and classify MR severity more precisely.