Dr. David Adams and Dr. Anelechi Anyanwu perform mitral valve repair surgery with Dr. Alain Carpentier looking on.

The decision to refer or accept a patient for mitral valve surgery is substantially different than for most other cardiac surgical operations. Unlike other structural cardiac diseases, completely asymptomatic patients at very low risk of sudden death are often considered for surgery in the setting of severe regurgitation. Secondly, the operation performed for degenerative mitral regurgitation is surgeon “skill and experience” dependent, which is very different than most other operations for structural heart disease (e.g. essentially all patients with calcific aortic stenosis referred to surgery undergo aortic valve replacement regardless of surgeon “skill and experience”.)