[Spontaneous reduction of late chronic atrial fibrillation after mitral valvuloplasty. Echocardiographic evidence of the restoration of mechanical atrial activity].

Spontaneous, long lasting reduction of chronic permanent atrial fibrillation, usually complicating rheumatic valvular heart disease, has rarely been described in the literature. Its mechanism is unclear. In practice, the question is to determine whether the electrical activation coincides with restoration of a mechanical atrial contraction. The authors report the case of a woman with mixed rheumatic aortic and mitral valve disease (essentially mitral stenosis), in whom reversion to sinus rhythm was observed after 9 years of atrial fibrillation and which was long lasting (at least 9 months), and, above all, accompanied by atrial contraction documented for the first time to the best of the authors' knowledge, by Doppler echocardiography.