Concomitant Tricuspid Valve Repair during Minimally Invasive Mitral Valve Repair

Background Concomitant use of tricuspid valve (TV) surgery and minimally invasive mitral valve (MV) repair is debatable due to a prolonged time of surgery with presumably elevated operative risk. Herein, we examined cardiopulmonary bypass times and 30-day mortality in patients who underwent MV repair with and without concomitant TV surgery. Methods We retrospectively evaluated 3,962 patients with MV regurgitation who underwent minimally invasive MV repair without (n = 3,463; MVr group) and with (n = 499; MVrthornTVr group) concomitant TV surgery between 1999 and 2014. Preoperative parameters between the groups were significantly different; therefore, propensity score matching was performed. Results Mean cardiopulmonary bypass time for all patients was 125.5 +/- 55.8minutes in MVr and 162.0 +/- 58.0 minutes in MVrthornTVr (p < 0.001). Overall 30-day mortality was significantly different between these groups (4.8 vs. 2.1%; p < 0.001); however, after adjustment, there was no significant difference (3.3 vs. 1.2%; p = 0.07). Backward logistic regression revealed that cardiopulmonary bypass time was not a significant predictor for early mortality within the MVrthornTVr cohort. Conclusion Concomitant TV repair using prosthetic rings through a minimally invasive approach is safe and does not lead to elevated early mortality in our patient cohort. Therefore, prolonged cardiopulmonary bypass time should not be the sole reason to rule out MV repair with concomitant TV repair and to prefer the use of suture techniques, which saves only a few minutes compared with prosthetic ring implantation.