Heart Valve Disease

The heart has four valves: the tricuspid, pulmonary, mitral, and aortic valves. These valves have tissue flaps that open and close with each heartbeat. The flaps ensure blood flows in the right direction through your heart's four chambers (right and left atria, right and left ventricles) and to the rest of your body. Birth defects, age-related changes, infections, or other conditions can cause one or more of your heart valves to not open fully or to let blood leak back into the heart chambers. This makes your heart work harder and affects its ability to pump blood efficiently.

Heart valves conditions fall into three basic categories:

Regurgitation, or backflow, occurs when a valve doesn’t close tightly. Blood leaks back into the chamber rather than flowing forward through the heart or into an artery. Backflow is most often due to prolapse, when the valve flaps bulge back into an upper heart chamber during a heartbeat. Prolapse primarily affects the mitral valve, but it may affect the other valves as well.

Please click here for more detailed information about aortic valve regurgitation.

Please click here for more detailed information about mitral valve prolapse.

Stenosis occurs when the flaps of a valve thicken, stiffen or fuse together. This prevents the heart valve from opening fully, and not enough blood flows through the valve. Some valves can have both stenosis and backflow problems.

Please click here for more detailed information about aortic valve stenosis.

Atresia occurs when a heart valve lacks an opening for blood to pass through.
Patients with heart valve conditions may develop endocarditis – an infection of the heart's valves or inner lining (endocardium). It is most common in people who have a damaged, diseased or artificial heart valve.

Please click here for more detailed information about endocarditis.

Symptoms

The main sign of heart valve disease is an unusual heart sound called a murmur, which can be heard with a stethoscope. Many people have heart murmurs without having heart valve disease or any other heart problems. Some have heart murmurs due to heart valve disease but have no other signs or symptoms or don't present symptoms until they're middle-aged or older.

Some common symptoms of heart valve disease relate to heart failure, which heart valve disease can eventually cause. These symptoms include:

Fatigue, shortness of breath, swelling of ankles, feet or sometimes the abdomen

Other symptoms include:

Chest pain upon exertion, a fluttering, racing, or irregular heartbeat, dizziness or fainting

Diagnosis

Electrocardiographic Tests, including Electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG), Stress Testing and Ambulatory Monitoring
Cardiac Imaging
Cardiac Catheterization (Coronary Angiography)

Treatment

Currently, no medicines can cure heart valve disease. Lifestyle changes and medication therapies, however, may often successfully treat symptoms and delay complications for many years. Eventually, patients may require surgery to repair or replace a faulty heart valve.

The Heart and Vascular Center at Providence offers a variety of resources to diagnose and treat patients with heart valve disease:

Physicians

Need current list of relevant physicians.