What is vegetative endocarditis of mitral valve?
Endocarditis is an inflammation of the valves of the heart. Endocarditis is often caused by the growth of bacteria on one of the heart valves, leading to a mass known as a vegetation. Symptoms can be nonspecific and include fever, malaise, shortness of breath, and weakness.
What does vegetation mean in endocarditis?
In endocarditis, clumps made of germs and cell pieces form an abnormal mass in your heart. These clumps, called vegetations, can break loose and travel to your brain, lungs, abdominal organs, kidneys, or arms and legs.
What is sterile endocarditis?
Noninfective endocarditis refers to formation of sterile platelet and fibrin thrombi on cardiac valves and adjacent endocardium in response to trauma, circulating immune complexes, vasculitis, or a hypercoagulable state. Symptoms are those of systemic arterial embolism.
Which type of endocarditis has vegetation on both sides of the valves?
Libman-Sacks endocarditis, also known as murantic or verrucous endocarditis, is a form of nonbacterial thrombotic endocarditis (NBTE) which involves the presence of sterile vegetations on the cardiac valves.
What does vegetation mean in medical?
Medical Definition of vegetation : an abnormal outgrowth upon a body part specifically : any of the warty excrescences on the valves of the heart that are composed of various tissue elements including fibrin and collagen and that are typical of endocarditis.
What causes vegetation on heart valve?
Infective endocarditis causes growths (vegetations) on the valves, produces toxins and enzymes which kill and break down the tissue to cause holes on the valve, and spreads outside the heart and the blood vessels.
What is a sterile vegetation?
Sterile vegetations form on heart valves in response to factors such as trauma, circulating immune complexes, vasculitis, or a hypercoagulable state. The sterile vegetations can embolize or become infected but rarely impair valvular or cardiac function.
Is endocarditis an autoimmune disease?
Endocarditis is a serious manifestation of several autoimmune rheumatic diseases, including rheumatic fever, systemic lupus erythematosous (SLE), and rheumatoid arthritis.
What causes the mitral valve to close?
The valve opens and closes because of pressure differences, opening when there is greater pressure in the left atrium than ventricle and closing when there is greater pressure in the left ventricle than atrium.
Why is mitral valve affected in endocarditis?
Normally, heart valves are highly resistant to the attachment of bacteria and resulting infection. Damage to the heart valves and inner lining of the heart is the main risk factor for infective endocarditis because it leaves the tissue susceptible to bacterial overgrowth.
What is Valve vegetation?
Endocarditis infection occurs along the edges of the heart valves. The lesions, called vegetations, are masses composed of fibrin, platelets, and infecting organisms, held together by agglutinating antibodies produced by the bacteria.
How long can you live with a bad mitral valve?
The worrisome natural history of severe mitral regurgitation Widely disparate estimates of long term survival in patients with mitral regurgitation—between 97–27% at five years—have been reported.
