The Ballooning Posterior Leaflet Syndrome: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Profiles in Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Groups

¹ Departments of Medicine, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and the Oklahoma City Veterans Administration Hospital, Oklahoma City
² Departments of Medicine, and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and the Oklahoma City Veterans Administration Hospital, Oklahoma

Due to a complex of vague symptoms in some patients with a ballooning posterior leaflet (BPL), a standardized personality inventory test (MMPI) was given to 14 patients exhibiting a midsystolic click and/or late systolic murmur and a positive echocardiogram for a BPL. Seven of the eight symptom-free patients had normal MMPIs. Of the six symptomatic patients, five had abnormal scores for hysteria and hypochondriasis, four abnormal scores for depression, psychopathic deviate and schizophrenia, and three abnormal scores for psychasthenia. Of these six patients, two have been resuscitated from a near-fatal arrhythmia and two have frequent premature ventricular contractions (PVCs). Since those patients with life-threatening arrhythmias showed at least four abnormal MMPI scales, it is postulated that an abnormal MMPI in a person with the BPL syndrome portends a greater risk for a potentially fatal arrhythmia. The presence of normal MMPIs in four symptomatic patients with aortic stenosis suggests that life-threatening symptoms per se do not account for the abnormalities found in patients with the BPL syndrome.