Valvular heart disease is the most important cardiac manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). However, severe mitral valve regurgitation necessitating valvular surgery due to SLE is rare. We report a 22-year-old male patient presenting with symptoms of congestive heart failure initially in whom lupus and severe mitral valve regurgitation were diagnosed. In our patient, four of the A...

BACKGROUND Mitral valve calcification is often incidentally detected on chest computed tomography (CT) scans obtained for a variety of noncardiac indications. In this study, we evaluated the association between mitral valve calcification incidentally detected on chest CT and the presence and severity of mitral valve disease on echocardiography. METHODS Of 760 patients undergoing 64-row multid...

A quantitative assessment of mitral valve orifice area can be achieved in patients with pure mitral stenosis by cardiac catheterization. In the presence of mitral regurgitation, however, accurate measurement often is impossible because total diastolic flow through the mitral valve frequently is unknow. Using a recently developed real-time, two-dimensional echocardiography system, we are able to...

The mitral valve apparatus is a complex anatomic and functional unit composed of the mitral annulus, valve leaflets, chordae, papillary muscles, and the underlying left ventricular wall. Normal function depends on both normal anatomy of each of these components and on the overall three dimensional relationships of these structures to each other, including the effects of overall left ventricular...

BACKGROUND Durability assessment of mitral valve repair for degenerative valve incompetence is actually limited to reoperation as the primary indicator, with valve-related risk factors for late death as a secondary indicator. We assessed serial echocardiographic follow-up of valve function as an indicator of the durability of mitral valve repair. METHODS AND RESULTS In 242 patients who had un...

Mitral valvular regurgitation consistently modified the wave form of the first derivative of the transthoracic impedance cardiogram. The transthoracic impedance cardiogram was recorded in 23 control subjects (group 1), and 23 patients with isolated mitral regurgitation (group 2). Simultaneous transthoracic impedance cardiogram, electrocardiogram, and mitral valve echocardiograms in group 1 show...

OBJECTIVES Mitral annular calcification is associated with significant morbidity and mortality at the time of mitral valve surgery. However, few data are available describing the impact of mitral annular calcification on early and late outcomes following mitral valve repair in the current era. METHODS Between 2001 and 2011, 625 patients were referred for mitral valve repair of severe mitral r...

Since the initial description of mitral valve prolapse as billowing mitral leaflets leading to regurgitation (1-4), physicians have had to contend with the problem of its noninvasive diagnosis (5-9). Lack of specificity of diagnostic criteria led to a "disease by definition" frequently diagnosed in otherwise normal subjects (10-22). Recent efforts have attempted to restore prolapse to the categ...

Accurate quantitation of mitral regurgitation offers a major clinical dilemma. The clinical clues depend largely on cardiac auscultation, the accuracy of which needs to be rigorously tested (1). Mitral regurgitation may not be associated with a clinically audible systolic murmur, and the auscultatory features of severity of regurgitation are generally based on increased volume of diastolic flow...

We selected 40 patients with severe symptomatic rheumatic mitral stenosis for balloon valvotomy using the Inoue balloon technique. The patients' mean age was 31 +/- 14 years and there were 24 females and 16 males. The patients were selected according to the following echo/Doppler criteria; 1. Severe mitral stenosis, i. e. mitral valve area (MVA) less than 1.1 cm2; 2. pliable anterior mitral val...