Word: mitral
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Fifty years ago, in my boyhood, a guy who blew out a mitral valve was sent home to sit in a sunny corner and play cribbage until congestive heart failure swept him away. Open-heart surgery was big news. One of the pioneers was C. Walton Lillehei at the University of Minnesota, a local celebrity on the order of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. The operations were enormously expensive, the survival rate around 50%, and Minnesota has always had plenty of finger waggers to remind you that all that money spent to repair that fat man's aorta could have bought nourishing...
Heart surgery is an artistic performance to benefit an audience that is sound asleep at the time. A man you've met only once slices open your chest so your heart can be stopped and chilled so a loose flap in your mitral valve can be sewn up. No big deal when it goes right, which, with an ace surgeon, it should...
Fashion Victims Purebred dogs are engineered to achieve a carefully defined look that can include stylishly exaggerated features - and some unwanted afflictions ... CAVALIER KING CHARLES SPANIELS: These dogs have a serious problem with inherited mitral valve disease, and are more than 50% likely to have heart murmurs by the age of five DALMATIANS: Inherited hearing defects may be linked to their white pigmentation, and yet dogs with small black spots, not big splotches, and lots of white fur are favored by breeders BULLDOGS: Once symbols of British stamina, the animals often have problems with breathing, even walking SHAR-PEIS: Adults...
...been told you have mitral-valve prolapse, it makes sense to ask your doctor to check again, particularly if it was diagnosed several years ago. That may be as simple as reviewing the tapes of your last ultrasound exam. If you do have mitral-valve prolapse but no thickening of the valves or backflow of blood into the left atrium, you probably don't need to take antibiotics before most dental procedures, according to the latest guidelines. Still, be sure to alert your doctor if you experience shortness of breath, a racing heartbeat or light-headedness...
...more on mitral-valve prolapse, visit our website at time.com/personal You can e-mail Christine at gorman@time.com