[Two cases of severe ischemic mitral regurgitation treated with CABG alone].

We report here two cases in which patients fell into pulmonary edema due to ischemic mitral regurgitation (ischemic MR) after cardiac catheterization and underwent emergency coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) using an intra-aortic balloon pumping. The patient were a 65-year-old man and a 80-year-old woman, and both had a chief complaint of angina after myocardiac infarction. In both cases, coronary angiography revealed triple vessel disease, and left ventriculography showed severe MR. However echocardiography, when they were hospitalized, did not show significant MR. Therefore we thought that they had gone into congestive heart failure because cardiac ischemia and volume load following cardiac catheterization provoked MR. In fact, postoperative left ventriculography and echocardiography showed decreased MR. We now think that it is important to keep in mind the cases of severe ischemic MR for which CABG alone is adequate treatment and to evaluate ischemic MR not only by left ventriculography but also by echocardiography.