Four cardiovascular societies offered recommendations to help get use of transcatheter therapies for mitral regurgitation off on the right foot in an overview released Nov. 25.

In late October, the FDA approved the MitraClip as a treatment for patients with mitral regurgitation who are considered too high risk for mitral valve surgery. The MitraClip is a minimally invasive, catheter-based device. Other technologies also are in development for treatment of mitral regurgitation.  

The American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) collaborated on the overview, which is intended to facilitate the dissemination of transcatheter therapies.

“The authors and societies envision this document serving as a broad guideline for the responsible deployment of these new therapies for our patients and teams," said John H. Calhoon, MD, overview co-chair and a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, in a release. “With this overview as a foundation, our societies will plan future documents to address appropriate data collection and use, best practices, team composition and further definition of patient characteristics.”

The overview borrows many of the concepts developed for the rollout of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), including the use of a heart team approach, criteria for participating centers and data collection through the STS/ACC Transcatheter Valve Therapy (TVT) Registry.

The authors proposed several recommendations, including:

• Continued development of regional heart valve referral centers of excellence;
• Use of experienced specialists who will form a dedicated, multidisciplinary heart team;
• Centers’ participation in the TVT registry;
• Operator training and credentialing criteria for mitral valve procedures, which is under development; and
• The development of guidelines for transcatheter mitral valve interventions.

The societies published the overview on their websites. It also will appear in print in their respective journals.