Moving up the operative clock in mitral regurgitation

Recently a joint task force of the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association published updated guidelines for the management of patients with valvular heart disease. An Executive Summary of these guidelines was published in the August 1, 2006, issue of Journal of the American College of Cardiology and a pocket guide is now available at www.cardiosource.com. The pocket guide focuses on three aspects of management most frequently encountered in the practice of adult cardiology: • Indications for echocardiography. • Indications for valvular surgery or percutaneous intervention. • Antithrombotic management of prosthetic heart valves. An earlier interview with Robert O. Bonow, MD, FACC, chair of the writing committee that produced the update of the original 1998 guidelines, reviewed issues relating to aortic stenosis. In this interview, Dr. Bonow discusses mitral regurgitation (MR).