Mitral Stenosis in Facsimile

Abstract

SINCE surgical treatment for mitral stenosis has become an accepted procedure it behooves the clinician to exert the utmost diligence in selecting all candidates who could conceivably be benefited by commissurotomy. With the increased interest in recent years, it has been more widely recognized that the "classic signs"—that is, apical mid-diastolic and presystolic murmur, accentuated mitral first sound, loud and reduplicated pulmonic second sound and mitral "opening snap"—are not always present in mitral stenosis, and means of ascertaining with certainty the presence or absence of physiologically significant obstruction are being sought. Cardiac catheterization, angiocardiography, roentgenokymography and electrokymography, and other means . . .