A particularly dangerous period for women with this lesion is when the blood pressure rises after the menopause and the patients become full-blooded and begin to put on weight. Also, these patients always suffer more or less from cold extremities. In most cases they sleep best and with least disturbance with the head higher than one pillow.
Besides the usual treatment for broken compensation in patients with this lesion, digitalis is of the greatest value, and the slowing of the heart by it, allowing the left ventricle to be more completely filled with the blood coming through the narrowed mitral opening during the diastole, is the object desired. This drug acts similarly on both the right and left ventricles, and though there is no real occasion for stimulation of the left ventricle, and it is the right ventricle that is in trouble, dilated and failing, still a greater force of left ventricle contraction helps the peripheral circulation. The action on the right ventricle contributes greatly to the relief of the patient by sending the blood through the lungs and into the left auricle more forcibly. and the left ventricle receives an increased amount of blood, the congestion in the lungs is relieved, and the dyspnea improves. Perhaps there is no class of cardiac diseases in which more frequent striking relief can be obtained than in these cases of mitral stenosis.
If the congestion of the lungs is very great, and death seems imminent from cardiac paralysis, if cyanosis is serious, and bloody. frothy mucus is being expectorated, venesection and an intramuscular injection of aseptic ergot may be indicated. Digitalis should also be given, hypodermically perhaps, but its action would be too late if it was not aided by other more quickly acting drugs. The physician may often save life by such radical measures.
MITRAL INSUFFICIENCY: MITRAL REGURGITATION
This is the most frequent form of valvular disease of the heart, and is due to a shortening or thickening of the valves, or to some adhesion which does not permit the valve, to close properly, and the blood consequently regurgitates from the left ventricle into the left auricle during the contraction of the ventricle. Such regurgitation may occur without valvular disease if for any reason the left ventricle becomes dilated sufficiently to cause the valve to be insufficient. Such a dilatation can generally be cured by rest and treatment. As with mitral stenosis, the most frequent causes are rheumatism and chorea, with the occasional other causes as previously enumerated.
The characteristic murmur of this lesion is a systolic blow, accentuated at the apex, transmitted to the left of the thorax, generally heard in the back, near the lower end of the scapula, and transmitted upward over the precordia.
Of all cardiac lesions, this is the safest one to have. Sudden death is unusual, the compensation of the heart seems to be most readily maintained, and the patient is not so greatly dangered by overexertion or by inflammations in the lungs. As in mitral stenosis, any increase in blood pressure—whether the normal increase after the age of 40, any continued earlier high tension, or increase from occupation or exercise—is serious as causing the left ventricle to act more strenuously, so that more blood is forced back into the left auricle, the lungs become congested, and the right ventricle, sooner or later, becomes incompetent.
When compensation fails with these patients, the first sign is pendent edema of the feet, ankles and legs; subsequently, if there is progressive failure of compensation, the usual symptoms occur.
The treatment is principally rest and digitalis, and the recovery of compensation is often almost phenomenal. Patients with this lesion are likely to be children and young adults, and the heart muscle readily responds as a rule to the treatment inaugurated. Later, in these patients, or if the lesion occurs in older patients, the return to compensation does not occur so readily. If the condition is developed from a myocarditis or from fatty degeneration of the heart, it may be impossible to cause the left ventricle to improve so much as to overcome this relative dilatation or relative insufficiency of the valve. If the dilatation of the left ventricle is due to some poisoning such as nicotin, with proper treatment— stopping the use of tobacco, administration of digitalis, and rest— the heart muscle will generally recover and the valve again properly close.