Updated pathophysiological overview of functional MR (ventricular and atrial)

Basic mechanism of ventricular functional mitral regurgitation (FMR) is subvalvular tethering. Left ventricular (LV) dilatation, in association with mitral valve (MV) annular dilatation, causes outward displacement of papillary muscles (PMs), which abnormally pulls or tethers MV leaflets, resulting in MV tenting, reduction in leaflets coaptation and MR. Because surgical annuloplasty does shorten distance between anterior and posterior MV annuli to improve coaptation but does not address this subvalvular tethering, ventricular FMR frequently persists or recurs in the chronic stage after surgical annuloplasty. This high incidence of persistent/recurrent MR requires additional procedures to reduce subvalvular tethering. Although patients occasionally show marked improvements after annuloplasty with surgical tethering reduction procedures such as PM approximation, evidence to support benefits of such surgery is limited, requiring further trials. Recently, MV adaptation or MV leaflets tissue growth associated with LV dilatation attracts attention. Patients with larger MV leaflets with significant LV dilatation/dysfunction show less MV tethering and MR compared to those with smaller MV leaflets but with similar LV remodeling, suggesting the protective or beneficial role of MV leaflets tissue growth against LV remodeling. The MV leaflets tissue growth has the potential to lead to novel strategies of treatment for ventricular FMR. It is well known that atrial FMR is frequent in patients with left atrial dilatation, typically in those with isolated atrial fibrillation. The degree of atrial FMR is usually mild, even when it is present, and occasionally moderate, and severe atrial FMR is really rare. It is known that only severe regurgitation causes heart failure in primary MR, resulting in description on indications of surgery or intervention for only severe MR in current guidelines. Therefore, this atrial FMR up to moderate degree did not attract attention for a long time. However, recent studies have shown that patients with only moderate atrial FMR develop severe heart failure, suggesting more aggressive indication of MV surgery or intervention for “moderate” regurgitation in patients with atrial FMR. Therefore, atrial FMR is now recognized highly important. The unveiled malignant nature of atrial FMR arises many questions, including (1) why patients with only moderate atrial FMR develop heart failure? (2) do patients with mild atrial FMR develop heart failure or not?, and many others. Atrial FMR seems even more mysterious after the unveiling of its significance.