The Mount Sinai Hospital The Mitral Foundation

  • Quality of Life

    Ultimately, the best indication of the successfulness of mitral valve repair for symptomatic patients lies in the quality of life. Because re-operation is a poor indicator of a patient’s status, freedom from re-operation does not necessarily imply a freedom from recurrent mitral regurgitation or symptoms. Similarly, survival does not necessarily imply successfulness of surgery. Several series have...

  • Non-surgical Management

    Figure 1: Cardiac events among patients with asymptomatic mitral regurgitation and medical management according to the EROAs current existing guidelines do not recommend surgery for asymptomatic or mildy symptomatic patients1, there is a large cohort of patients with significant mitral regurgitation that do not undergo surgery, thus allowing for observational studies of outcomes in non-surgically ...

  • Mitral Valve Replacement

    An artificial mitral valve after removalMitral valve replacement has been superseded by mitral valve repair as the treatment of choice for all forms of mitral regurgitation. Figure 1: Survival after mitral valve repair or replacement compared with expected survival.There are several reasons to prefer a mitral valve repair to a replacement (such as avoidance of anticoagulation, lower risk of endoc...

  • Expertise in Re-operations and Re-repairs

    One main area of expertise of our valve repair team is cardiac re-operations - performing repeat cardiac surgery on patients who have had previous heart surgery. These patients fall into three main groups.Patients who have had previous operations unrelated to the heart valves but now have a heart valve problem. A typical example would be a patient who has had coronary artery bypass surgery in the ...

  • Methods of Re-operation

    Before surgery all patients undergo a special CT scan of the chest to help us understand the anatomy of the heart and blood vessels and therefore anticipate problems and difficulties during re-operations. The CT scan is able to precisely locate all the cardiac chambers, blood vessels, bypass grafts and heart valves so we can avoid injuring these structures while we open the chest and free-up the h...

  • General Disclosure of Financial Relationships Between Mount Sinai Physicians and Industry

    Mount Sinai takes pride in the excellence and expertise of our physicians, and we make every effort to ensure that our physicians' clinical decisions are made in the best interests of each patient. Often, as leaders in their respective fields, our physicians are highly qualified to collaborate with commercial companies in the development of new and innovative therapies to improve the treatment opt...

  • Reference Center Referrals

    We are pleased to review all requests for referrals.Please send us a referral letter, including the patient demographics and insurance information. Include a list of medications and a copy of the Cath or ECHO videos on CD.If you are unsure if a patient is a suitable candidate for mitral valve repair, send us their ECHO and we will let you know the probability of repair.Please send all information ...

  • Perfusion

    Our Cardiothoracic Surgery Perfusion Services team at the Mount Sinai Medical Center consists of nationally Certified Cardiovascular Perfusionists (C.C.P.’s). These medical professionals are licensed to operate extracorporeal machinery, most commonly the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit, often known as the heart-lung machine, which is used when patients undergo most open-heart surgeries.During cardi...

  • After Surgery

    After surgery you will be admitted to the CSICU (Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit) usually still under the effect of anesthesia, so fully sedated. You will still have the breathing tube down your mouth connecting you to the ventilator. You will be connected to several monitors and there will be several alarms and buzzers sounding repeatedly to continuously alert intensive care staff to changes ...

  • Transfusions and Blood Donation

    Transfusion of red blood cells is a common practice in patients undergoing open heart surgery. While multiple safety mechanisms have been put in place by our blood bank to ensure our patients' safety, there are still numerous risks associated with blood transfusion.Our team utilizes the following strategies to reduce the amount of blood transfusions given to our patients.Preoperative Optimization ...