Investigators with the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) program to detect the presence and severity of mitral valve regurgitation, the most common heart valve disorder. The program's findings, in , may help clinicians identify patients whose mitral valve regurgitation is manageable with medication as well as patients with more severe cases who would benefit from a minimally invasive valve repair procedure or surgery. "Mitral regurgitation is a common but often missed .
It can be challenging to precisely assess the disease severity, which is critical to know which patients can take a watch-and-wait approach and which should proceed to an intervention," said David Ouyang, MD, a cardiologist in the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute, an investigator in the Division of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, and corresponding author of the study. "The program we developed may one day be used by doctors when considering the best treatment approach for individual patients." "This could improve how we identify patients with mitral regurgitation, which is becoming more prevalent in our , and to personalize treatment even more so than we already do," said Raj Makkar, MD, associate director of the Smidt Heart Institute and vice president of Cardiovascular Innovation and Intervention for Cedars-Sinai.
The heart has four valves that open and close to move blood throughout the body. In some people, the mitral valve, locat.