Prevalence of mitral valve prolapse in Saudi sickle cell disease patients in Dammam - A prospective-controlled echocardiographic study.

Mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is the most common valvular heart disease and there are numerous reports of a strong association with many conditions including sickle cell disease (SCD). Since SCD is very common in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, we undertook a prospective controlled study to determine and compare the prevalence of MVP in the SCD patients with other groups of subjects. Three hundred and sixteen subjects (156 males and 160 females) were studied. They were divided into four groups based on their hematologic diagnoses - I SCD, II normal controls, III sickle cell traits, IV other anemias. The prevalence of MVP is 17.4% in Group I, 13.3% in Group II, 21.4% in Group III and 19.4% in Group IV. There was no statistically significant difference in the prevalence of MVP among the four study groups. In contrast to a previous study, these results show that the prevalence of MVP by echocardiographic criteria (M-mode and 2-dimensional) in SCD patients is the same as in the general population. We believe that mere case-reporting and lack of or inappropriate control in most of the clinical series are responsible for the wide range of conditions claimed to be associated with MVP.