Mitral Valvotomy in Young Patients.

There have been many reports in the past few years of the results of mitral valvotomy (Sellors, Bedford, and Somerville, 1953; Goodwin et al., 1955; Logan and Turner, 1953, 1959; Ellis, Harken, and Black, 1959; Baker and Hancock, 1960; and others). However, the majority of patients reported on are in the "older" group above 20 years. Reports on young patients who had mitral valvotomy are relatively few. Angelino et al. (1956) reported on 11, Gray (1958) on 3, and Borman et al. (1961) on 13 patients. In these three series the younger group formed only a small percentage of the total number of mitral valvotomies. This report is based on the first 126 patients below the age of 20 years (average 15-5 years) with mitral stenosis who were submitted to mitral valvotomy at the Christian Medical College Hospital from 1954 to 1961. These young patients formed 34 per cent of the total of 373 mitral valvotomies.