Patients with long-standing valvular disease develop a cardiomyopathy which usually improves after disease correction.

Very rare tumors.

Papillary fibroelastoma is the most common primary valvular tumor and frequently occurs on aortic valve cusps.

Myxoma and Hamartoma are less common.

Depending on their locations, valvular tumors can develop fibrin clots, which can subsequently embolize into the systemic or pulmonary circulation.

CT/MR: can detect small tumors and assess their motion during the cardiac cycle.

Caused by endocarditis.

Factors predisposing to endocarditis include intravenous drug use, poor dental hygiene, long-term hemodialysis, diabetes mellitus, mitral valve prolapse syndrome, and prosthetic valves.

The vegetations follow the motion of the valvular cusp to which they are attached.

Frequently the posterior leaflet of the mitral valve is involved.

See also Endocarditis.

Positive or negative.

To assess the extent and direction of remodeling in individual lesions, it is necessary to compare vessel size at the lesion site to an adjacent reference site that contains minimal disease.

Positive and negative remodeling is defined as larger or smaller external vessel area at the lesion site than at an adjacent reference site.

Abnormal embryological development of one or more thoracic arteries.

Vascular rings lead to variable respiratory symptoms and/or feeding difficulties because a complete or partial ring of vascular tissue surrounds and compresses the trachea, the bronchi, and the esophagus.

Tracheal stenosis is significant when >50 %.

CT: offers better comprehension of anatomic relationships between airway and anomalous vessels often with no need for sedation.

MR: (1) Always requires general anesthetic in children; (2) always include in the MR protocol orthogonal breath-hold black-blood sequence and 3D CEMRA.

Surgical correction, intended as resection and/or reimplantation of anomalous vessel, often improves respiratory symptoms. These are predominantly consequences of long-standing airway compression, resulting in tracheobronchomalacia.

To obtain accurate flow measurement, set the right VENC.

VENC should be just above the flow peak velocity.

If VENC < peak velocity: aliasing artifact.

Start using standard VENC value for each vessel and increase of 10 by 10 until aliasing artifact disappears.

Normal aortic valve VENC: 150.