Functional maturity of tricuspid and mitral valves in school children evaluated by echocardiography

The prevalence of valve regurgitation in healthy people has been previously examined by echocardiography.1–4 Pulmonary regurgitation or tricuspid regurgitation (TR) was common,1–4 mitral regurgitation (MR) was less common, and aortic regurgitation was generally undetectable.2–4 In addition, the prevalence of regurgitant signals varies with age or sex. Assuming that a low prevalence of regurgitant signals indicates functional maturity, examining changes in the prevalence and severity of these signals is useful for evaluating the functional development of the valves. In this study, we examined the prevalence and severity of TR and MR with colour Doppler echocardiography in school children and healthy adults. The committee for research in human subjects of the University of Yamanashi approved the protocol. We enrolled 253 children (84 junior school children with a mean (SD) age of 9.8 (0.3) years and 169 junior high school children aged 13.0 (0.3) years) and 45 healthy adult volunteers aged 38.5 (7.4) years in this study. All participants underwent ECG and a physical examination before the study. No findings were abnormal. The colour Doppler examination was performed with an echocardiographic system (Sonos 2500; Hewlett Packard, Andover, Massachusetts, USA) with a 3.5 MHz transducer. All participants were continuously examined by a single skilled …