Noninvasive determination of the mitral valve area in stenosis: a computational model and correlation with autopsy and open heart measurements.

An analytical formulation has been developed which allows the computation of mitral valve area (A) from the potentially noninvasive paramaeters of hear rate (R), cardiac output (CO) and diastolic filling period (DFP) by the equation A = 21 CO/R x DFP2. The computed areas correlate with autopsy and open heart measurements (r = 0.91) for resting state conditions of moderate to severe mitral stenosis. These results suggest that noninvaasive methods can have an application in mitral valve determinations.