Percutaneous balloon mitral valvotomy during pregnancy.

: Rheumatic mitral valve stenosis continues to be the most frequently encountered clinically significant valvular abnormality in pregnant women. We retrospectively studied the fetal outcomes of patients with severe rheumatic Mitral Valve Stenosis (MS) admitted to hospital with heart failure and underwent Percutaneous Balloon Mitral Valvotomy (PBMV) during pregnancy. We identified all of the pregnant cases with rheumatic MS from February 1st 1994 till February 1st 2011 who underwent PBMV from medical records in the tertiary referral center of Madani Heart Hospital in Tabriz, Iran. Follow up was done by phone call and office visit. During this period 24 pregnant patients with mean ages of 29.45 +/- 5.05 (19-38) had undergone PBMV for severe MS. Fourteen patients could not be reached and were lost to follow-up. PBMV had been performed during second trimester of pregnancy in 20 cases (83.3%) and during third trimester in 4 patients (16.6%). The success rate of PBMV was 100%. Pulmonary artery pressure reduced from 58.88 +/- 21.97 to 38.50 +/- 8.87 (p < 0.05), peak and mean transmitral valve gradient reduced 25.20 +/- 9.71 to 11.03 +/- 3.61 (p < 0.0001), 14.18 +/- 7.60 to 5.00 +/- 1.39 (p = 0.004), respectively. We conducted follow up in 10 patients with good fetal outcome in all except in 2 infants who died during follow up with intractable heart failure. Twenty patients were in normal sinus rhythm at the time of procedure (83.3%) and 4 of them (16.7%) had arterial fibrillation. PBMV during pregnancy could be recommended as a relatively safe procedure for mother and fetus.