No longer an open-heart surgery, heart valve repair and replacement uses minimally invasive procedures with small incisions, less pain and shorter hospital stays.
Your heart has four valves. Normally, these valves open to let blood flow through or out of your heart, then shut to keep it from flowing backward. When they don’t work properly, we call it heart valve disease or valvular heart disease. In these situations, heart valve repair or heart valve replacement may be recommended by your cardiologist.
This results in making your heart work harder and affects its ability to pump blood. You can be born with heart valve disease or develop it because of infection or aging.
INTEGRIS Health physicians, cardiologists, and specialists have extensive experience in diagnosing and treating heart valve disease.
When one or more heart valves are diseased, a valve repair or replacement surgery may be recommended by your doctor. If your heart valves are damaged or diseased, you may experience the following symptoms:
Heart valves can’t repair themselves. As time progresses, the heart valve will continue to get worse while symptoms become more present. Depending on the type of heart valve disease you have, your doctor can recommend medications or other solutions for the meantime. However, heart valve repair or replacement will be considered more as the condition deteriorates.
Your doctor may recommend a heart valve repair surgery to fix a damaged or faulty valve while preserving as much of the person’s own tissue as possible. The mitral valve is the most commonly repaired valve; however, heart repair surgery can treat problems with the aortic and tricuspid valves.
Within the four valves of the heart, the aortic and mitral valves are the most common to be replaced. The pulmonary and tricuspid valves aren’t as common to be replaced in adults. The replacement of a heart valve can be done to remove a faulty valve and replace it with a biological or mechanical valve. These replacement heart valves are biocompatible, meaning our immune system won’t reject the new valve.
The most common surgical procedure for narrowing of the aortic valve is aortic valve replacement. Mitral stenosis and aortic stenosis will also require valve replacement or repair.
There are two conditions that would call for a valve replacement.
In a healthy heart, the aortic valve is supposed to send blood to the rest of the body. However, when the valve returns blood back to the heart instead, this is called aortic regurgitation. This condition is sometimes referred to as aortic insufficiency. This can eventually lead to heart failure.
The mitral valve works by pumping oxygen rich blood through the heart. Mitral regurgitation is when the mitral valve pumps the blood into the lungs instead. People experiencing this condition may experience shortness in breath, irregular heartbeats, and chest pain.
The type of heart valve replacement depends on several factors. Your doctor will take into account which heart valve needs replacement, the symptoms you’re experiencing, and the risk of the surgery. Valve replacement options include the following:
If you are over the age of 40, check the risk factors. Schedule a Heart Scan today.
