Atrial Functional Mitral Regurgitation

“Atrial FMR is increasingly recognized as an important consequence of chronic atrial fibrillation. It's a challenging problem. It tends to affect older patients. It tends to contribute to heart failure development, often in the setting of preserved ejection fraction. And it's a context in which we don't often have very effective or targeted medical therapy.”

“Atrial FMR is a fundamentally different entity, both in mechanism and in left ventricular function.”

“It's a newer subtype of secondary mitral regurgitation that has been introduced in the last 10 years. In this case, patients have normal systolic left ventricular function and normal leaflet motion. In AF, though, the left atrium can become stiff and fibrotic, which can cause severe dilatation of the left atrium. This results in dilation of the mitral annulus and impaired annular contractility.”