ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY · PATHOLOGY

Flail mitral leaflet

Four Chamber · Mitral valve

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Grayscale echocardiogram showing abnormal mitral leaflet motion

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Explore the anatomy

The contours follow visible regions, not the full three-dimensional extent.

UNDERSTAND THE FINDING

A leaflet that flips back

The diagnosis

Flail posterior mitral leaflet, with severe mitral regurgitation confirmed in the published case.

What should I look for?

Watch the bright, mobile posterior leaflet tip turn down into the left atrium when the ventricle contracts. The atrium is below the valve in this view. Use the pointer and slow motion to follow the abnormal movement.

Why does it matter?

The two leaflets should meet to close the mitral valve. A flail leaflet cannot close effectively, allowing blood to leak backwards into the left atrium.

WHAT THIS CLIP SHOWS

This grayscale recording shows leaflet movement. The severity of the leak was established in the full examination; it cannot be measured from this clip alone.

About this case & sources

Hsu P, Shepherd C, Shokraneh K, Cabrera G, Kalivoda EJ (2020). Emergent Diagnosis of a Flail Mitral Leaflet With Bedside Echocardiography. Cureus 12(7): e9374. Video 5: apical four-chamber view with expanded zoom, showing a flail posterior mitral leaflet.

A continuous 0.8-second heartbeat extract is repeated at the original 30 frames per second. The ECG strip and empty side margins are cropped out; audio is omitted. No generated image detail. The left atrium is only partly included in this valve-focused view.

Pointers mark visible leaflet regions in selected clear frames. The chamber contours are inset orientation guides, not endocardial segmentations. The right-heart chambers are only partly visible. The tricuspid pointer marks the AV junction rather than individual leaflets. Independent clinical review of the added guides is pending.

The current publisher PDF specifies CC BY 4.0. The archived article XML links CC BY 3.0; the source, authors and modifications are credited here.

Published case ↗Original Video 5 ↗CC BY 4.0 ↗Credits & image preparation ↗