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.