Pulmonary congestion and low cardiac output cause exercise intolerance in patients with mitral stenosis. There is little information on degree of improvement in exercise capacity with surgical treatment. The purpose of the present study was to assess the degree of improvement in exercise capacty after mitral valve replacement. Between january 1993 and March 1998 mitral valve replacement was performed in 28 patients with mitral stenosis complicated with pulmonary hypertension and tricuspid regurgitation and the exercise capacity was evaluated prospectively. The average exercise time increased from 3.71±1.86/min to 6.76±2.12/min (p<0.01), and exercise capacity increased from 4.05±1.93 MET to7.80±1.62 MET after mitral valve replacement (0.001). In conclusion, this study has demonstrated significant improvement in exercise performance after mitral valve replacement in patients with pre-operative pulmonary hypertension and that subjective feeling of exercise capacity was lower than objective improvement.

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