# Mitral regurgitation

Condition · id `cardio:mitral-regurgitation` · Cardiovascular Atlas · release `5dcd9b263fe17744` (public)

> General information from published sources, not medical advice, and not reviewed by clinicians. Check the cited source before relying on anything here.

The atlas's own text and curation may be reused under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/): credit the atlas, and do not use it commercially. See the atlas About page. Text quoted from a source stays under that source's own terms, given as the source's reuse\_basis. The atlas's reuse terms do not cover it. The downloads list each quotation with its source in third\_party\_quotations.

Also called: Mitral valve insufficiency; Leaky mitral valve; Secondary mitral regurgitation; Functional mitral regurgitation

Browse, organ or system: Heart  
Browse, condition area: Heart failure; Valve and congenital heart disease  

## In plain language

Mitral regurgitation means the valve between the left upper and lower heart chambers does not close tightly, so some blood leaks backward. A US government patient page says the leak is most often due to prolapse, where the valve flaps sag back. In people with heart failure the leak can be due to weakness of the left lower chamber (left ventricular dysfunction); trials call this secondary or functional mitral regurgitation. Medicines, a repair or a replacement can treat it, and a US government treatment page lists a device placed through a catheter among the options for people for whom open-heart surgery is not advised.

## Technical summary

MeSH D008944 is named Mitral Valve Insufficiency. The registry record for COAPT lists the condition as mitral regurgitation, and its abstract describes patients with heart failure and moderate-to-severe or severe secondary mitral regurgitation who stayed symptomatic despite maximal doses of guideline-directed medical therapy. US approvals for the MitraClip device cover degenerative mitral regurgitation at prohibitive surgical risk (2013) and secondary mitral regurgitation (2019). Secondary mitral regurgitation also relates to heart failure, and this record links to the heart failure record for that reason.

## Connected pages

- A leak of the mitral valve: Heart valve disease (`cardio:heart-valve-disease`)
- Related to heart failure: Heart failure (`cardio:heart-failure`)
- Filed under this front: Procedures and surgery (`cardio:front-procedures-and-surgery`)
- Evaluated for this: MitraClip (`cardio:mitraclip`) [a claim, not a settled fact; see claim `cardio:claim-coapt-hf-hospitalization` and its context]
- Evaluated for this: MitraClip (`cardio:mitraclip`) [a claim, not a settled fact; see claim `cardio:claim-coapt-all-cause-death` and its context]
- Investigated in: COAPT trial (`cardio:coapt`)
- Related to: Transcatheter edge-to-edge repair (TEER) (`cardio:transcatheter-edge-to-edge-repair`)

## Provenance

Content hash: c2e3209fb28fed97ea1e842ca448cee9ff00690d543cf97d6aae9fbb3b257baa
Last substantive edit: 2026-10-15
Evidence last checked: 2026-10-14