in 2013 at the physician's discretion. 7-10 Subject selection is shown in Figure 1. We excluded patients with severe or moderate aortic stenosis (n=133), aortic regurgitation (n=133), mitral stenosis (n=9), mitral regurgitation (n=169), severe congenital heart disease or pericardial disease (n=0), or LVEF <50% (n=407) due to the effects of these conditions on TR. The study population consisted of 3,714 patients, who were categorized into 2 groups depending on the presence or absence of moderate to severe TR (Figure 1): the moderate to severe TR group (n=53) and the no moderate to severe TR group (n=3,661). The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Kitano Hospital (approval number: P16-02-005). Informed consent was waived due to the retrospective design of the study. We disclosed the details of the present study to the public as an opt-out method and the notice clearly informed patients of their right to refuse enrollment. The study protocol conformed to the ethical guidelines of the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki, as reflected in a priori approval by the institution's Human Research Committee. Patient records and information were anonymized and de-identified before analysis. 7-10