Echocardiographic prevalence of bicuspid aortic valve in the population

INTRODUCTION: The exact prevalence of bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is controversial. We studied the prevalence of BAV using two large independent echocardiographic databases. METHODS: We analyzed 24,265 echocardiograms performed at our academic institution between 1984 and 1998 for various clinical reasons and 1742 echocardiograms that were obtained by screening teenage athletes in Southern California. The total prevalence of BAV was calculated. RESULTS: The first database revealed a gender distribution of 11,339 (47%) male and 12,926 (53%) female patients. The second database consisted of 1172 (67%) male and 570 (33%) female athletes. The echocardiographic prevalence of BAV was 0.6% in the larger database and 0.5% in the smaller athletic database. CONCLUSION: We found the prevalence of bicuspid aortic valve in two large databases to be between 0.5% and 0.6%. This figure was consistent across different ages, in both databases.