Mitral valve stenosis ) can cause a precipitous decrease in cardiac output and sudden congestive heart failure. Patients with mitral stenosis prompts a series of hemodynamic changes that frequently cause deterioration of the patient's clinical status. A reduction in cardiac output, associated with acceleration of heart rate and shortening of the diastolic time, frequently leads to congestive heart failure. In addition, when AF sets in, systemic embolization becomes a real danger. Mitral stenosis typically progresses slowly (over decades) from the initial signs of mitral stenosis to NYHA functional class II symptoms to the development of atrial fibrillation to the development of NYHA functional
Mitral insufficiency during a cardiac cycle. Methods that have been used to assess the regurgitant fraction in mitral regurgitation include echocardiography, cardiac catheterization, fast CT scan, and cardiac MRI. The echocardiographic technique to measure the regurgitant fraction is to determine the forward flow through the mitral valve (from the left atrium to the left ventricle) during ventricular diastole, and comparing it with the flow out of the left ventricle through the aortic valve in ventricular systole. This method assumes that the aortic valve does not suffer from aortic insufficiency. Another way to quantify the degree of MR is to determine the area