CLINICAL ASPECTS OF CALCIFICATION OF THE MITRAL ANNULUS FIBROSUS

Abstract

CALCIFICATION of the mitral annulus fibrosus has been studied by pathologists 1 and is fairly often discovered more or less accidentally during life by radiologists. 2 Both groups of observers, properly enough, have regarded it as a degenerative change of no clinical significance. Yet such calcification is not entirely without clinical interest and was in part the subject of a recent monograph. 3 Its occurrence in the older age groups guarantees that it will be associated at least now and then with obvious heart disease 4 ; in fact, it has long been known 5 as one variety of those calcifications which cause heart block. 6 Then too either the calcification itself or the accompanying valvular changes of aging might reasonably be expected to alter cardiodynamics even in the absence of heart block; practically nothing 7 has been written about murmurs in its presence, and prominent authors 8 dismiss it somewhat vaguely as occasionally associated with mitral