Postoperative Transesophageal Echocardiographic Evaluation in Patients with Cardiac Valve Replacement

경식도 심초음파 검사를 이용한 판막대치술 환자의 평가

Since advent of the prosthetic cardiac valve replacement, much efforts for accurate assessing value function in-vivo have been attempted. To evaluate the postoperative functional and morphological status of the replaced cardiac valve prosthesis, 33 patients with valve replacement were studied by transthoracic and transesophageal 2-dimensional echocardiac imaging as well as by color Doppler flow velocity imaging. Twenty four patients had mitral valve replacement. 6 patients had aortic valve replacement and 3 patients had both mitral and aortic valve replacement. There were 34 mechanical and 2 biological prosthesis. Comparing to transthoracic echocardiography, transesophageal approach showed transvalvular regurgitant jet flow amid the prosthetic mitral valve ring during. systole and much clear visualization of cardiac chamber behind prosthesis which could give shadowing effect to ultrasound beam. According to the quantitative grading by the length and area of mitral regurgitant flow, 24 out of 27 mitral valves revealed mild degree regurgitation considered as physiological after prosthetic bileaflet valve replacement and the other 3 valves including 2 biological prosthesis had moderate degree regurgitation which was regarded as pathologic one. 2 cases of left atrial thromboses and 1 case of paravalvular leakage which were not visible by transthoracic approach were identified by transesophageal echocardiography in patients with mitral valve replacement and patients with aortic valve replacement respectively. We conclude that in patients with prosthetic mitral valve replacement, transesophageal 2-dimensional imaging with color Doppler can suggest reliable information beyond that available from the transthoracic access even though it gives patient some discomfort to proceed.