Surgical Results of Mitral Valve Repair for Mitral Regurgitation in Pediatric Patients with Mitral Valve Prolapse

The rare incidence of mitral regurgitation (MR) caused by mitral valve prolapse in children lacks clinical management experience. In this study, we present our experience in surgical management and the difference between isolated anterior mitral leaflet (AML), posterior mitral leaflet (PML), and bileaflet prolapse in pediatric patients. Between January 2014 and February 2021, 52 pediatric patients, aged 7.04 ± 4.02 years (ranged from 0.17 to 14 years), were diagnosed as moderately severe (11, 21.2%) or severe (41, 78.8%) MR, of which, 34 (65.4%) were owing to AML prolapse, one (1.9%) was PML prolapse, and 17 (32.7%) caused by bileaflet prolapse. All had received mitral valve repair, and were divided into the group of AML prolapse and bileaflet prolapse. Demographic and clinical characteristics of all patients were retrospectively collected and analyzed. The left ventricular diameter in the bileaflet group was significantly larger than the AML group (4.04 ± 0.73 cm vs. 3.45 ± 0.75 cm, P = 0.026). The median follow-up time was 33 months (ranged from 6 to 88 months). The postoperative and follow-up results had no significant difference between two groups. And only 2 patients received reoperation due to posterior annuloplasty ring dehiscence. For pediatric patients, the majority of the patients had isolated AML prolapse instead of PML prolapse. There was no difference in recurrent regurgitation or reoperation between isolated AML and bileaflet prolapse after MV repair, and we suggest more aggressive surgical strategy should be considered in pediatric patients with bileaflet prolapse than AML prolapse.