Mitral valve repair versus replacement in patients with rheumatic heart disease

Background: Rheumatic heart disease remains a major cause of cardiovascular death worldwide. Limited real-world nationwide data are available to compare the long-term outcomes between mitral valve repair and replacement in rheumatic heart disease. Methods: We identified adult patients with rheumatic heart disease who underwent mitral valve repair or replacement surgery between 2000 and 2013 from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. Outcomes of interest included operation-related complications, all-cause mortality, and mitral valve reoperation rate. Propensity score matching at a 1:1 ratio was conducted to mitigate possible confounding factors. Results: A total of 5086 patients with rheumatic heart disease who underwent mitral valve surgery were identified. Of those, 489 (9.6%) and 4597 (90.4%) underwent mitral valve repair and mitral valve replacement, respectively. After propensity score matching was applied, each group had 467 patients. No difference in risk of in-hospital mortality was observed between groups. With a mean follow-up of 6 years, the mitral valve repair group had comparable risks of all-cause mortality with the mitral valve replacement group (33.4% vs 32.5%; hazard ratio, 1.01; 95% confidence interval, 0.81-1.25). However, higher risks of mitral valve reoperation were observed in the mitral valve repair group (subdistribution hazard ratio, 4.32; 95% confidence interval, 2.02-9.23). Previous percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy was identified as a risk factor of mitral valve reoperation in the repair group. Conclusions: Among patients with rheumatic heart disease, mitral valve repair is not associated with superior long-term outcomes. Patients should be carefully selected for mitral valve repair because of its higher reoperation rate, particularly those with previous percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy.