Mitral Regurgitation

IT may be thought curious that I have chosen mitral regurgitation (MR), often considered the simplest of the cardiac valvular lesions, as the subject of this lecture. Of all valvular lesions, rheumatic MR is the one that could probably be recognized most easily by the beginning medical student, since the characteristic systolic murmur is so readily detected. My own interest in the subject began during medical school, when I became aware of the controversy surrounding the interpretation of systolic heart murmurs in children with a history of rheumatic fever. In the 1920's and 1930's it was considered by some that . . .