I was told I have mitral valve prolapse, but a recent echocardiogram showed nothing – who’s messing up here?

"Mitral valve prolapse has varying severity, and different thresholds to call it such depending on the reader. The likelihood is that your valve is (mostly) normal."
- Dr. Alexander Postalian, General and Interventional Cardiologist

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Transcript

00:00:00:15 - 00:00:05:17
Unknown
I was told I have mitral valve prolapse, but a recent echocardiogram showed nothing.

00:00:05:17 - 00:00:07:05
Unknown
Who was messing up here?

00:00:07:05 - 00:00:11:20
Unknown
Well, what is it? Mitral valve. It's another valve inside your heart

00:00:11:20 - 00:00:13:29
Unknown
opens and closes with every heartbeat.

00:00:14:14 - 00:00:34:28
Unknown
And it opens like this. And then it closes like this. In mitral valve prolapse, the tissue of the valve is a little longer than usual. And instead of closing down here, it goes up like that. Okay. Eventually, if the valve degenerates, it can go up more and more until it doesn't really close and the valve leaks and leaks.

00:00:35:14 - 00:00:39:06
Unknown
Mitral valve prolapse is very, very, very common.

00:00:39:06 - 00:00:48:29
Unknown
And there's different degrees of severity. So one doctor reading an echo can say you have mitral valve prolapse. And the other one

00:00:48:29 - 00:00:52:21
Unknown
says, you know what I really think this is prolapse. It can happen. And

00:00:52:21 - 00:01:06:11
Unknown
what does that mean. It means that it's probably not that bad. So if you had an echo saying you had mitral valve prolapse and another one not mentioning it, you can ask the person that read your most recent study to review it.

00:01:06:14 - 00:01:08:15
Unknown
but again, what I would

00:01:08:15 - 00:01:12:14
Unknown
take from that is that it's probably not a

00:01:12:14 - 00:01:13:27
Unknown
bad result

00:01:13:27 - 00:01:15:01
Unknown
if one can't even

00:01:15:01 - 00:01:16:19
Unknown
see it. Depending on the time.

00:01:17:08 - 00:01:27:16