Prevalence of mitral valve prolapse in Saudi sickle cell disease patients in Dammam - A prospective - controlled echocardiographic study

ABSTRACT

Mitral valve prolapse [MVP] is the most common valvular heart disease and there are numerous reports of a strong association with many conditions including sickle cell disease [SCD]. Since SCD is very common in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, we undertook a prospective controlled study to determine and compare the prevalence of MVP in the SCD patients with other groups of subjects. Three hundred and sixteen subjects [156 males and 160 females] were studied. They were divided into four groups based on their hematologic diagnoses - I SCD, II normal controls, III sickle cell traits, IV other anemias. The prevalence of MVP is 17.4% in Group I, 13.3% in Group II, 21.4% in Group III and 19.4% in Group IV. There was no statistically significant difference in the prevalence of MVP among the four study groups. In contrast to a previous study, these results show that the prevalence of MVP by echocardiographic criteria [M-mode and 2-dimensional] in SCD patients is the same as in the general population. We believe that mere case-reporting and lack of or inappropriate control in most of the clinical series are responsible for the wide range of conditions claimed to be associated with MVP