Mitral valve repair a 12-year-old girl with rheumatic mitral stenosis. The development of the heart-lung machine in the 1950s paved the way for "replacement" of the mitral valve with an artificial valve in the 1960s. For decades after, mitral valve replacement was the only surgical option for patients with a severely diseased mitral valve. However, there are some significant downsides to a prosthetic mitral valve. Infection of the valve can occur, which is dangerous and difficult to treat. Patients with mechanical heart valves are required to take blood thinners for the rest of their lives, which presents a risk of bleeding complications. The
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