Is surgery the fair competitor for MitraClip?

ABSTRACT

In the last decades, the overlapping areas of intervention between cardiac surgeons and interventional cardiologists are rocketing, especially in the field of treatment of heart valve disease. But, while for the aortic valve the competition, even for nonhigh risk patients, has become tightened, in the context of mitral regurgitation, the surgery seems to not have competitors. In fact looking the results of studies published so far, a question arises Is surgery the fair competitor for the Mitraclip? The meta-analysis by Abdul Khader et al. summarized few evidences present in this field, only 11 observational studies and 1 randomized trial, providing an awesome response "NO." Is therefore not a case if recently two trials, MITRA-FR and COAPT, chose to use as competitor for MitraClip, more rightly, medical therapy instead of surgery. In conclusions, in case of mitral regurgitation (MR), surgery is still largely the gold standard treatment and so MitraClip cannot be mention at all as competitor of surgery. It can be the right choice of case of primary MR where patients showed high risk for surgery. In case of secondary MR, especially with large and poor left ventricle we should wait for a clear answer on its role, yet.