Heart Valve Disease
According to the American Heart Association, approximately 5 million Americans are diagnosed with valvular heart disease each year. Heart valve disease occurs when your heart’s valves do not work the way they should. Your heart valves open and close each of your four heart chambers to maintain a one-way blood flow through your heart and that prevent backward leakage. The four heart valves are aortic, mitral, pulmonary and tricuspid. Conditions that can affect the four valves include:
- Valvular insufficiency
- Aortic valve regurgitation
- Mitral valve regurgitation
- Pulmonary valve regurgitation
- Tricuspid valve regurgitation
- Valvular stenosis
- Aortic valve stenosis
- Mitral valve stenosis
- Pulmonary valve stenosis
- Tricuspid valve stenosis
- Congenital valve disease
- Bicuspid aortic valve disease
- Acquired valve disease
- Rheumatic fever
- Endocarditis
- Mitral valve prolapse
Diagnosis & testing
Many valve disease sufferers have no symptoms at all. Your physician at Lakeview Hospital will prescribe diagnostic tests to see if you have valve disease. Test could include:
- Cardiac catheterization
- Cardiac nuclear medicine
- Chest X-ray
- Echocardiogram
- Electrocardiogram
- Exercise stress test
- Holter monitoring
- Transesophageal echocardiography
Procedures & treatment
If your heart team determines that you have coronary artery disease, your physician may prescribe different options for your treatment, such as:
- ACE-inhibitors
- Beta-blockers
- Blood-thinners
- Calcium-channel blockers
- Cardiac catheterization
- Cardiac stent
- Cholesterol-lowering medications
- Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) Nitroglycerin
- Revascularization by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)
- Percutaneous left ventricular assist device
- Surgical left ventricular assist device
Click here to schedule an appointment with one of our Heart & Vascular Care providers.