Verdict's In: Percutaneous Balloon Mitral Valvuloplasty Works Well

Percutaneous balloon mitral valvulopasty (PMV) has now been around long enough for long-term outcomes to be assessed.

Reporting at the ESC Congress 2016 Ines Rodriges of Hospital de Santa Marta, Lisbon, Portugal, and colleagues reviews outcomes of patients who had the procedure to correct rheumatic mitral stenosis.

Of 213 consecutive patients who had PMV in a single center, from 1991 to 2 014, 89% had a successful PMV. During a mean followup period of 11.2 years, only 25.15% of patients had a major cardiac event. Of those 6.6% were deaths, 6.6% repeat PVM, and 21% mitral surgery.

Cumulative event-free survival at 20 years was 54.7%.

"Up to 20 years after successful PMV, a sizeable proportion of patients are event-free, which confirms the late efficacy of PMV," the team concluded.

"In our cohort, echocardiographic score before PMV was the only independent predictor of event-free survival," they added.

Previous studies have shown low technical failure and major complications with PMV, they noted.