Mitral valve stenosis most cases, the diagnosis of mitral stenosis is most easily made by echocardiography, which shows left atrial enlargement, thick and calcified mitral valve with narrow and "fish-mouth"-shaped orifice and signs of right ventricular failure in advanced disease. It can also show decreased opening of the mitral valve leaflets, and increased blood flow velocity during diastole. The trans-mitral gradient as measured by Doppler echocardiography is the gold standard in the evaluation of the severity of mitral stenosis. Another method of measuring the severity of mitral stenosis is the simultaneous left and right heart chamber catheterization. The right heart catheterization (commonly known
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