Hemodynamic and clinical efficacies of catheter balloon percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy: experience of 100 patients with rheumatic mitral stenosis.

From January 1987 to December 1988, 100 patients with symptomatic severe rheumatic mitral stenosis underwent percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy (PTMC). The patients included 32 males and 68 females, aged 19-71 years (mean of 41). Mild mitral regurgitation (grade 1 or 2) was present in 23 patients and a history of thromboembolism in 12. One patient had had mitral restenosis after surgical open mitral commissurotomy 9 years earlier. The mitral valve was successfully dilated in 97 patients. PTMC resulted in immediate improvements in hemodynamic measurements. The left atrial pressure decreased from 24.5 +/- 5.3 to 14.8 +/- 5.2 mmHg (p less than 0.001), the mean mitral transvalvular gradient from 13.8 +/- 4.8 to 5.0 +/- 2.8 mmHg (p less than 0.001), and the mean pulmonary artery pressure from 38.8 +/- 12.0 to 30.6 +/- 10.3 mmHg (p less than 0.001). The mitral valve area increased from 1.1 +/- 0.3 to 2.2 +/- 0.8 cm2 (p less than 0.001). The cardiac output increased from 4.5 +/- 1.2 to 4.84 +/- 1.2 L/min (p less than 0.05). The right atrial pressure did not change significantly after PTMC (6.5 +/- 3.8 vs 6.4 +/- 4.0 mmHg). The mitral valve area measured by 2-D echocardiograms increased from 1.04 +/- 0.48 to 1.88 +/- 0.66 cm2 after PTMC (p less than 0.001). All 97 patients were followed for 6-24 months (median of 13) after the PTMC. After an initial recovery period of 1-2 weeks, all patients reported improvements in symptoms and in New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class by at least one class. A comparison between treadmill exercise test durations before, and 3 months after PTMC, showed an increase from 9.1 +/- 4.3 to 15.4 +/- 3.8 minutes (n = 60; p less than 0.001).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)