Elsevier

American Heart Journal

Volume 70, Issue 3, September 1965, Pages 319-325
American Heart Journal

Clinical communication
Systolic clicks and the late systolic murmur: Intracardiac phonocardiographic evidence of their mitral valve origin

https://doi.org/10.1016/0002-8703(65)90179-1Get rights and content

Abstract

The use of intracardiac phonocardiography has been employed as a method of documenting the origin of systolic clicks associated with an isolated late systolic murmur in a patient with hemodynamic evidence of mitral incompetence. Registration of both of these acoustical events within the left atrial chamber has not been hitherto described. Response of the clicks and murmur to the infusion of pressor amine and to the inhalation of amyl nitrite adds further weight to the concept of their origin at the mitral orifice. These observations confirm and extend previous information relating the late systolic murmur to organic mitral incompetence even if the murmur is accompanied by systolic clicks.

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This investigation was supported in part by Public Health Service Research Career Program Award HSG 14,009 and by Public Health Service Grant H-3319 from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md.

Georgetown University Hospital, 3800 Reservoir Rd., N.W., Washington, D. C., 20007.

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