Intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography is essential for left atrial appendage closure

Abstract

To the Editor,We have recently read with great interest the article by Jianget al.1entitled“Left atrial appendage exclusion is effective in re-ducing postoperative stroke after mitral valve replacement.”Weappreciate the authors for their study describing that left atrialappendage (LAA) exclusion using a double‐layer suture duringmitral valve replacement in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) issafe and effective in reducing early ischemic stroke. On the otherhand, we believe that there are some major drawbacks that needto be addressed