CarboMedics and St.Jude Medical bileaflet valves are in widespread use but few noninvasive studies about the two types of valves were performedd. The aim of this study was to assess the characterisics of the normally functioning CarboMedics and St.Jude Medical prosthesis in the mitral position.

Patients with normally functioning CarboMedics and St.Jude Medical valve in the mitral position were included. They underwent transthoracic and transesophageal echocardiography 7 to 14days after mitral valve replacement. With the use of color flow Doppler transesophageal echocardiography, we measured the length, width, and area of maximal physiologic regurgitation and by using 2-D transesophageal echocardiography, we measured the opening and closing angles of the bileaflet valves and we tried to elucidate whether spontaneous echo contrast is present in the left atrium.

31 pateints underwent mitral valve replacement with CarboMedics and 10 patients with St.Jude Medical. The length of maximal physiologic regurgitation ranged from 11mm to 44mm in carboMedics mitral valve and from 12mm to 36mm in St.Jude Medical mitral valve. The area ranged from 0.19cm²to 3.48cm²in CarboMedcs and from 0.58cm²to 4.49cm²in CarboMedics and The mean opening and closing angles are 83.2(±1.1)°, 22.3(±1.3)° in CarboMedics and 86.5(±1.2)° 26.2(±3.2)° in St.Jude Medical. Spontaneous echo contrast was positive in 66% of patients, of whom patioents with atrial fibrillation showed nuch higher revalence of SEC than patients with sinus rhythm.

These finding valve will give us a reference valvue for the evaluation of prosthetic valve function in mitral position.