Usefulness of Tei index in patients with rheumatic mitral regurgitation and apparently normal left ventricular ejection fraction.

Background And Aim: Rheumatic mitral regurgitation is rather common in developing countries. It usually progresses insidiously, because the heart compensates for increasing regurgitant volume by left-atrial enlargement, causes left-ventricular overload and dysfunction, and yields poor outcome when it becomes severe. Doppler-echocardiographic methods can be used to quantify the severity of mitral regurgitation.