A "serious" and "common" heart condition found to be neither. According to MED Associate Professor of Medicine Dr. Emelia Benjamin, millions of Americans who have been diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse, a heart defect, have less to worry about.

Two recent studies show that the condition, until now considered a "hidden epidemic" afflicting 5 to 30 percent of the population, is far less dangerous -- and less common -- than doctors have believed.

In many cases, doctors have commonly warned patients that this often-symptomless condition might require surgery to prevent complications that can cause sudden death, such as stroke and heart failure. But researchers have determined that patients with mitral valve prolapse suffered these complications at about the same rate, just 6 percent, as a healthy control group.

"Don't assume that it's a sort of death sentence," says Benjamin. She advises patients to get retested, particularly if they initially were diagnosed years ago.

Researchers also found that prolapse strikes men and women equally, contradicting the belief that it is especially common in women under 45.

The mitral valve lets oxygenated blood into the heart's main pumping chamber. In prolapse, for reasons that are unclear, the valve's two flaps change shape, allowing some blood to leak backward. The diagnosis has frightened healthy patients and led to increased health-insurance premiums for many, notes coauthor Dr. Robert Levine, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Early research found that large numbers of people had been diagnosed with mitral valve prolapse simply because cardiologists had no standard criteria for what exactly constitutes this condition. Doctors wrongly believed that normal valves were shaped like saucers; their research subjects were generally people with symptoms that caused them to seek treatment at major hospitals.

Using newly developed, specific criteria, Benjamin's team reexamined ultrasound data from participants in the long-running Framingham Heart Study. She found that only 2.4 percent, or 84 people, had the condition; just 5 had serious complications.

Researchers now intend to discover which of the five million-plus Americans with prolapse will develop dangerous complications.

The study was reported in the July issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Bad news? Say it with a keyboard. A new study coauthored by SMG Professor of Management Information Systems Lee Sproull has found that in business, bad news is best delivered by e-mail -- not face-to-face or on the telephone -- because negative comments are transmitted more accurately when sent electronically.

Coauthor Stephanie Watts Sussman (SMG'98) explains that over e-mail, "people don't sugarcoat. They don't sweet-talk it. They just tell it like it is." Sussman has a doctor of business administration degree in information systems from SMG.

Sussman and Sproull studied how bad news is delivered because receiving accurate information, negative or positive, can improve an organization. The authors do not recommend delivering all bad news this way, however. Giving negative comments face-to-face is often regarded as a sign that the news is important and that the one delivering it cares about the recipient.

In the study, Boston University undergraduates were asked to give information to a fellow student about a bogus résumé the student supposedly submitted for comments. When the participants had only positive comments, they didn't distort the good news, whether they delivered it in person, over the phone, or by e-mail. But with bad news, participants tended to soften the criticism. However, there was significantly less distortion in e-mail messages than when participants spoke on the phone or face-to-face. Participants also reported that they felt more comfortable sending bad news through e-mail than by other form of communication.

The study was published in the June issue of Information Systems Research.