Mitral valve severe form known as caseous calcification of the mitral valve that can be mistaken for intracardiac mass or thrombus. The closing of the mitral valve and the tricuspid valve constitutes the first heart sound (S1), which can be heard with a stethoscope. It is not the valve closure itself which produces the sound but the sudden cessation of blood flow, when the mitral and tricuspid valves close.. Abnormalities associated with the mitral valve can often be heard when listening with a stethoscope. The mitral valve is often also investigated using an ultrasound scan, which can reveal the size and flow
Mitral insufficiency of the regurgitant flow at the level of the valve. This is known as the regurgitant orifice area, and correlates with the size of the defect in the mitral valve. One particular echocardiographic technique used to measure the orifice area is measurement of the proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA). The flaw of using PISA to determine the mitral valve regurgitant orifice area is that it measures the flow at one moment in time in the cardiac cycle, which may not reflect the average performance of the regurgitant jet. The treatment of mitral insufficiency depends on the acuteness of the disease