Five-year experience with a suture annuloplasty for mitral valve repair

We present five years' experience with mitral plication annuloplasty, perfo rmed with a semicircular buttressed suture around the posterior leaflet in 130 patients (mean age 58 +/- 11 years) with primary mitral valve disease ( n = 71) or functional mitral regurgitation (n = 59), In 65 cases the mitral valve itself was also repaired, Concomitant myocardial revascularization w as performed in 40 cases and aortic valve replacement in 43, All but three patients were followed up (97.6%). Postoperative echocardiography showed ac ceptable mitral area (2.28 +/- 0.39 cm(2)) and good valve competence in all cases. Inhospital mortality was 3% and late mortality 4.8%. During the fol low-up period (22.8 +/- 10.9 months) 8 patients (6.6%) required mitral valv e replacement because of progression of native valve disease (n = 4), techn ical failure (2) or expansion of the annuloplasty suture (2). Mitral annulo plasty thus can be performed simply and with good results, using a strong, non stretchable buttressed suture. This procedure can be an inexpensive alt ernative to ring implantation.