Transcatheter mitral valve implantation: a brief review.

In the last year transcatheter mitral valve implantation (TMVI) has seen a major jump in development. This technique offers the potential to treat a great number of elderly and/or high-risk patients with severe mitral regurgitation (MR). Such patients are declined surgical intervention either because the institutional Heart Team considers the risk of intervention to exceed the potential benefit, or because the patients and their families believe the morbidity of mitral surgery to be excessive. The advent of a less invasive transcatheter treatment could, therefore, potentially appeal to both clinicians and patients alike. In this overview paper, we describe briefly these recent developments in TVMI technologies as an introduction to the dedicated TVMI technical device parade later in this supplement.