Mitral regurgitation--evaluation of a multidimensional echocardiographic grading system. A study on 177 patients with chronic primary and secondary mitral regurgitation.

Introduction: In grading mitral regurgitation (MR) magnetic resonance imaging is the gold standard but 2D echo is mostly used in clinical practice. However, each single echo parameter is prone to confounding influences. With regard to chronic primary and secondary MR the purpose of this study was to compare a new multi-dimensional echo-based grading system with an independent pre-operatively used invasive standard.