Anatomical studies were made on 70 necropsied hearts with atrioventricular defects from patients with situs solitus and atrioventricular concordance, all having a common atrioventricular orifice. The arterial connections were concordant in 68 and were double outlet right ventricle in two; cases with arterial discordance (transposition) or single outlet of the heart were excluded. It proved pos...

Imaging has been key to deciphering the fundamental mechanism of postinfarction ischemic mitral regurgitation (MR) based on 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional echocardiographic visualization of leaflet tethering. Advanced magnetic resonance and radionuclide techniques combined with echocardiography have related this restrictive leaflet dysfunction to the severity and location of myocardial damage ...

1. The pinnae of sensitive brier or Schrankia are favorable for demonstrating summation of dissimilar stimuli. 2. The demonstration was made as follows: A time of day was chosen when the closure of a single proximal leaflet did not provoke closure of the next distal leaflet. An irritating gas was applied to the pinna. A few seconds later, a single leaflet was touched; it closed, induced closure...

BACKGROUND Although chronic mitral regurgitation results in adverse left ventricular remodeling, its effect on the mitral valve leaflets per se is unknown. In a chronic ovine model, we tested whether isolated mitral regurgitation alone was sufficient to remodel the anterior mitral leaflet. METHODS AND RESULTS Twenty-nine sheep were randomized to either control (CTRL, n=11) or experimental (HO...

Ischemic mitral regurgitation is mitral insufficiency caused by myocardial infarction. Recent studies suggest that mitral leaflets have the potential to grow and reduce the degree of regurgitation. Leaflet growth has been associated with papillary muscle displacement, but role of annular dilation in leaflet growth is unclear. We tested the hypothesis that chronic leaflet stretch, induced by pap...

Left atrioventricular valve regurgitation often occurs as a postoperative hemodynamic complication from repair of an atrioventricular septal defect. In this study, cross-sectional two-dimensional Doppler flow mapping of the left atrium was used to quantify postoperative regurgitant flow in 29 patients. Its severity and location was related to the shape of the three leaflets of the left componen...

We recently performed mitral valve repair for a case of mitral regurgitation due to Barlow's disease, which is relatively rare in Japan. Both the anterior and posterior leaflets were affected by advanced myxomatous change, and appeared markedly thickened and redundant. Although extensive resection of the anterior leaflet is not a generally accepted method, nearly one fourth of the anterior leaf...

Simultaneous recordings of reflected ultrasound from the anterior mitral leaflet and left ventricular outflow, the ECG, the phonocardiogram, and a recording of the carotid artery pulse were obtained in six patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. Abnormal sharp systolic anterior movement (SAM) of the mitral leaflet was observed. This movement began with the onset of ventricular ej...

This paper presents a semi-automatic method for tracking the mitral valve leaflet in transesophageal echocardiography. The algorithm requires a manual initialization and then segments an image sequence. The use of two constrained active contours and curve fitting techniques results in a fast segmentation algorithm. The active contours successfully track the inner cardiac muscle and the mitral v...

We report the 20 year follow up of a female patient who underwent mitral valve billowing and prolapse (Barlow) repair at the age of 29 yrs. Our repair method to aggressively remodel the valve, which maximizes predictable anatomic and physiologic efficacy and minimizes unpredictable results incorporates a complete resection of the posterior leaflet, a sliding and folding plasty with the remainin...