[Polypous endocarditis of the tricuspid valve. The morphological changes in the heart and lung in one case].

Abstract

A case of polypous endocarditis which affects the tricuspid valve and whose genesis remains unclear (a septic state, an idiopathic disease?) is described. Clinically the disease has taken its course as a chronically recurring form of pulmonary thromboembolism. Morphologically it concerns to a massive fibroplastic verrucous endocarditis of the tricuspid valve and a more slightly expressed similar process in the wall of the right atrium and ventricle, combined with a significant fibrosis of the myocardium. The death has come from a massive thrombotic embolism in the two branches of the pulmonary artery on the background of a great number of small thromboembolic and hemorrhagenic infarctions with a different duration in the two lobes of the lung, which lead to an adaptable reconstruction of many lung vessels. The presence of a discrete affection of the aortic valve according to a rheumatic type and the combination of the disease, in the described case, with essential hypertension and thrombophlebitis undergone in the past, give a reason to discuss the possibility of taking into account these diseases in etiopathogenesis of the described myocardiopathy.