PHYSICS OF AORTIC LESIONS
Next in frequency to mitral insufficiency is aortic insufficiency, which occurs most frequently in men. The cavity of the heart that is most affected by this lesion is the left ventricle, which receives blood both from the left auricle, and regurgitantly from the aorta. This part of the heart, being the strongest muscular portion, is the part most adapted to hypertrophy, and the hypertrophy with this lesion is often enormous. For a long time this large muscular section of the heart can overcome all difficulties of the aortic insufficiency. The pulse, however, will always show the quickly lost arterial pressure of every beat on account of the aorta losing its pressure through the regurgitant flow of blood. Sooner or later, from the impaired aortic tension causing a diminished or imperfect flow of blood through the coronary arteries, impaired nutrition of the heart muscle occurs. In other words, an intestinal or chronic myocarditis or fibrosis develops, with perhaps later a fatty degeneration. When this condition occurs, of course, the repair of the heart is impossible.
This form of valvular lesion is the one that is most likely to cause sudden death. In aortic regurgitation Nature causes the heart to beat rapidly. Such a heart must never beat slowly, as the longer the diastole prevails the more blood will regurgitate into the left ventricle, and death may occur from sudden anemia of the base of the brain. Such a heart may, of course, receive a sudden strain, or the left ventricle may dilate, and yet serious myocarditis or fatty degeneration may not have occurred.
The signs of lack of compensation are generally cardiac distress, rapid heart, insufficiency of the systolic force of the left ventricle, and therefore impaired peripheral circulation, a sluggish return circulation, pendent edemas, and soon, with the left auricle finding the left ventricle. insufficiently emptied, the damming back of the blood is in broken compensation with the mitral lesions.