You may want to consider treatment for mitral valve leakage sooner rather than later, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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If your mitral valve is leaky your blood isn’t flowing as it should, and shortness of breath, fatigue and other symptoms may develop. Since treatment may allow surgical repair of the valve, cardiovascular surgeon James Gammie at Johns Hopkins says people are coming in earlier and earlier.

Gammie: It's remarkable nowadays there's been a sort of a sea change in how and when we treat mitral valve disease surgically, and a lot of patients are coming to us without symptoms at all. Their primary care physician is astute and they listen with a stethoscope. A lot of physicians pooh pooh the value of a physical exam but I can tell you that one thing when your doc puts a stethoscope on your chest and they hear whoosh whoosh whoosh and they send you to a cardiologist and they show that you have a severe leak of the mitral valve that is a very valuable intervention.   :31

Gammie says repair is usually successful and symptoms will resolve. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.