Anatomy of the mitral valve during autopsy compared to the data of lifetime echocardiography

Autopericardial reconstruction of heart valves makes it possible to restore normal hemodynamic parameters using patient’s tissue, which do not cause rejection reactions and do not require constant intake of anticoagulants. Knowledge of the mitral valve anatomy and math modeling are needed to perform a personalized reconstruction. Universal formulas for the structure of the mitral valve can be derived by echocardiography. The paper compares transthoracic echocardiography and the anatomy of the mitral valve during autopsy. The paper compares transthoracic echocardiography and the anatomy of the mitral valve during autopsy. Math modeling of the autopericardial leaflets and primary (marginal) chords is described. Objective. To evaluate comparability of the morphometric results obtained by echocardiography and autopsy. Material and methods. 12 hearts after autopsy were analyzed by calculating the size and relative position of the valvular structures, and 20 transthoracic echocardiographic measurements were made on the Philips CX50 ultrasound machine. Exclusion criteria: heart disease, primarily mitral valve pathology, as well as previous cardiac surgery. Morphometric data were analyzed by statistical software platform IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0. The Kolmogorov—Smirnov test, the independent sample t-test, the Mann—Whitney U test, the Pearson correlation coefficient, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and the linear regression were used. Results. On the basis of EchoCG data and anatomical studies, mathematical models of the mitral valve of the heart are presented and universal formulas are obtained for calculating the size of the mitral valve cusps and their primary chords with a known diameter of the mitral valve. Comparative characteristics of echocardiography and anatomical study of the mitral valve are given. Conclusion. Two-dimensional echocardiography is used for studying the anatomy of the mitral valve. Ultrasound visualization of the diameter of the mitral valve and the length of its anterior and posterior cusps significantly correlates with their true sizes. The method finds limited application in studying the height of the valves and the length of the primary chords. However with suitable improvement of accuracy it can be used.