Echocardiography in Percutaneous Balloon Mitral Valvuloplasty

Percutaneous balloon valvuloplasty (BV) has been used successfully in recent years for the relief of mitral stenosis, and in many instances, as an alternative to cardiac surgery. This procedure requires precise evaluation of both valve morphology and function for preprocedure decision making and follow-up of patients. Two-dimensional (2-D) echocardiography is a unique, noninvasive tool for evaluating morphologic characteristics of valve, subvalvular apparatus, and valve annular size. Doppler echocardiogarphy provides functional information on transvalvular flow velocity, which can be used to derive pressure gradient across valve and regurgitant flow. Mitral valve area can be either obtained from 2-D echocardiography or derived from Doppler pressure half time. Echocardiography is currently the most widely used technique for assessing results of percutaneous BV. More recently, transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) has been used for the evaluation of patients undergoing percutaneous mitral BV in whom left atrial thrombus is suspected and for the intraoperative monitoring of the valvuloplasty procedure. In this article we discuss the advantages and limitations of both transthoracic echocardiography and TEE, its recent developments in monitoring the procedure, evaluation of immediate results and long term follow-up after the valvuloplasty procedure, and its clinical utility in the selection of patients for percutaneous BV.