THE USE OF TRANSESOPHAGEAL ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY TO PREDICT SURGICAL
COMPLEXITY SCORING SYSTEM FOR DEGENERATIVE MITRAL VALVE REPAIR
Abstract
Background: For severe mitral valve (MV) degenerative disease,
repair is recommended. Prediction of repair complexity and referral to
centers of excellence can increase rates of successful repair. This
study sought to demonstrate that TEE is a feasible imaging modality to
predict the surgical MV complexity score previously developed by Anyanwu
et al. Methods: Two hundred TEE examinations of patients who
underwent MV repair (2009 – 2011) were retrospectively reviewed and
scored by two cardiac anesthesiologists. TEE scores were compared to
surgical complexity scores of same subset of patients. Kappa values were
reported for the agreement of TEE and surgical scores. McNemar’s tests
were used to test the homogeneity of the marginal probabilities of
different scoring categories. Results: TEE scores were slightly
lower (2[1,3]) than surgical scores (3[1,4]). Agreement was 66%
between the scoring methods, with a moderate kappa (0.46). Using
surgical scores as the gold standard, 70%, 71% and 46% of simple,
intermediate and complex surgical scores, respectively, were correctly
scored by TEE. P1, P2, P3, and A2 prolapse were easiest to identify with
TEE and had the highest agreement with surgical scoring (P1 agreement
79% with kappa 0.55, P2 96% (kappa 0.8), P3 77% (kappa 0.51), A2 88%
(kappa 0.6)). The lowest agreement between the two scores occurred with
A1 prolapse (kappa 0.05) and posteromedial commissure prolapse (kappa
0.14) (Figure 3). In the presence of significant disagreement, TEE
scores were more likely to be of higher complexity than surgical.
McNemar’s test was significant for prolapse of P1 (p=0.005), A1
(p=0.025), A2 (p=0.041), and the posteromedial commissure
(p<.0001).