They concluded that cor bovinum was a decreasing but still frequent autopsy finding.

Fluri and Gebbers define cor bovinum as a heart exceeding 500 g in weight.

In tertiary syphilis the aortic root becomes so dilated that the aortic valve becomes incompetent and cor bovinum results.

A Medline search in January 2008 of articles published since 1950 revealed seven articles on "cor bovinum" (in the earlier part of this period only the titles could be searched), of which only one was in English.

Cor bovinum refers to a massive hypertrophy of the left ventricle of the heart due to volume overload, usually in earlier times in the context of tertiary syphilis but currently more often due to chronic aortic regurgitation, hypertensive and ischaemic heart disease.