Cardiac Vascular Nursing Certification Practice Exam 2025 – Your All-in-One Guide to Exam Success!

Mitral and tricuspid stenosis are conditions characterized by the narrowing of the mitral and tricuspid valves, respectively. This narrowing impedes blood flow from the atria to the ventricles, particularly during the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle when the heart is relaxing and filling with blood.

As a result of this obstruction, a diastolic murmur is produced. These murmurs typically occur when blood flows through the narrowed valves during diastole. In the case of mitral stenosis, the characteristic sound is often described as a low-pitched, rumbling murmur best heard with the patient in a left lateral position. Tricuspid stenosis presents with a similar low-pitched sound, heard best at the left lower sternal border.

Physiologic murmurs, on the other hand, are usually softer and occur in the absence of structural heart disease, often related to normal variations in blood flow or conditions such as fever or pregnancy. Systolic murmurs occur when the heart is contracting and are linked to conditions such as aortic or pulmonary valve stenosis, while normal heart sounds refer to the standard S1 and S2 heart sounds without any pathological murmurs.

Thus, the identification of diast