Rheumatic Mitral Valvulitis with a 'Giant Vegetation'

Infective endocarditis (IE) is the infection of inner endothelial layer of the heart including the heart valves and it may present as rapidly progressive or manifest itself as subacute or chronic disease. The epidemiology of infective endocarditis has been changed over the past few decades and the incidence of IE in children in United States and Canada is 1 in 1,250 pediatric hospital admissions in the early 1980s. Atleast 70% of infective endocarditis in children occurs with congenital heart disease whereas rheumatic heart disease in southern states of India and the degenerative mitral valve disease (myxomatous, mitral valve prolapse) in the western countries are the most underlying predisposing conditions to infective endocarditis in adolescents. The characteristic lesion of infective endocarditis is ¿vegetation¿ and a ¿large¿ vegetation > 10 mm in size has been reported with an incidence of 15.9-62.5% in patients. The significance of vegetation size has been a subject of discussion for many years to predict the embolic episodes. Background of this case study illustrated the varying size and shape of giant vegetation attached to the anterior leaflet of mitral valve.