Word: mitral
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...right upper chamber (auricle). It empties from there through the tricuspid valve into the right ventricle. This muscular chamber contracts and pushes the blood through the pulmonary valve and pulmonary artery to the lungs to pick up fresh oxygen. Reddened blood returns to the left auricle, passes through the mitral valve into the left ventricle. This most muscular of the heart's chambers sends it pulsing through the aortic valve into the aorta, the great artery trunk of which all other arteries are but branches. In the case of Surgeon Bailey's patient, this smooth mechanism was dangerously...
Other defects may be acquired later in life, notably scarring and narrowing of the valves (especially the mitral) as the result of rheumatic fever. Following this or other diseases, these same valves instead of being "sticky" and tight may be too wide open and leaky (regurgitant...
After working on dogs for five years, duplicating earlier abortive mitral-valve operations, Bailey thought he knew what had been wrong with them-faulty approach and damaging the leaflets of the valves. He worked out his own approach, first put his finger inside a human heart to open a scarred mitral valve in June 1945. Through an accident (no fault of Bailey's) the patient bled to death. Misfortune beset him in three other cases. Not until June 10, 1948 did he have a "good risk" patient at Philadelphia's Episcopal Hospital. Mrs. Melville Ward, 24, of East...
...common disorder of the human heart, reported Dr. James H. Wible and colleagues of Detroit's Wayne University College of Medicine. Called "Elgiloy," the metal is formed into a valvelike flap and covered with nylon. The surgeon fits it into the heart in place of a sub-par mitral or aortic valve. Within 48 hours normal tissue begins to grow around it, in about two weeks completely encloses it. The metal is expected to retain its springiness beyond the patient's life expectancy. ¶Because certain cancers take up phosphorus more readily than healthy tissues do, a University...
Where Is the Villain? The earliest, most dramatic progress came in the field of heart surgery. When they could deal with disease by the use of scalpel and mechanical ingenuity, U.S. doctors have worked wonders, e.g., the complex blue-baby operation, opening the mitral valve inside the heart, heart-lung machines, even the use of a dog's lung to substitute for the patient's during an operation...