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Abstract Background : There is a lack of adherence to guidelines when it comes to evaluation of mild valvular heart diseases. It’s common to over-diagnose mild mitral valve diseases (MVD) and this imposes a burden on the healthcare system and causes increasing patient’s anxiety.Purpose of the work: To detect the prevalence of over-diagnosed mild MVD; mitral regurgitation, mitral stenosis and mitral valve prolapse.Methods: One hundred subjects, with a previous diagnosis of mild MVD, were included. A detailed transthoracic echocardiography was performed, following the most recent guidelines’ recommended techniques and thresholds in diagnosing MVD. The recent and the old echocardiographic reports were compared to find out the prevalence of true (both reports were positive) and false (the recent report was negative) mild MVD.Results: Seventy patients (70%) presented with a diagnosis of mild mitral regurgitation, 14 (14%) with mild mitral stenosis and 16 patients (16%) with mitral valve prolapse. Of those, false mitral regurgitation was found in 49/70 patients (70%, p=0.001), false mitral stenosis in 8/14 patients (57.14% p=0.6) and false mitral prolapse was found in 6/16 patients (37.5%, p=0.3). Patients with the false diagnosis of mild mitral regurgitation had significantly smaller left ventricular end-diastolic and end-systolic diameters and significantly higher ejection fraction.Conclusion: The problem of over-diagnosis of mild MVD is not uncommon. Adherence to the guidelines and a good quality echocardiography are of utmost importance in decreasing the prevalence of over-diagnosis of valve diseases |