Heart Valve Disease
Heart valve disease occurs when the heart valves do not work the way they should.
In heart valve disease, at least one of the four heart valves that keep blood flowing in the correct direction through your heart doesn’t function properly. These valves include the tricuapid valve, mirtal valve, pulmonary valve and aortic valve. Each valve has flaps called leaflets, for the mitral and tricuspid valves, and cusps, for the aortic and pulmonary valves. These flaps open and close once during each heartbeat. Sometimes the valves don’t open or close properly, interrupting the blood flow through your heart to your body.
Types of Heart Valve disease:
Valvular Stenosis
- This is when any of the valves of the heart doesn’t open properly due to a stiff, or broken valve this will cause less blood to pass through the valves.
Valvular Insufficiency
- It is when the valves do not close properly. This will cause the blood in the heart to backflow and also insufficient blood flow to the body.
Effects of Heart Valve disease.
Heart valve disease can cause chest pain that may happen only when you exert yourself. You also may notice:
- Fluttering,
- Racing
- Irregular heartbeat.
Some types of heart valve disease, such as aortic or mitral valve stenosis, can cause dizziness or fainting. Other common signs and symptoms of heart valve disease relate:
Heart failure, which heart valve disease can cause. These signs and symptoms include:
- Unusual fatigue (tiredness)
- Shortness of breath, especially when you exert yourself or when you’re lying down.
- Swelling in your ankles, feet, legs, abdomen, and veins in the neck.
How to know if you have Heart Valve Disease ?
An Echocardiography is required to fully diagnose Heart Valve Disease.Your doctor may order several tests to diagnose your condition, Tests may include: Electrocardiogram, Cardiac MRI, Chest X-ray, etc. However, to confirm that diagnosis, an Echocardiogram is required.
Treatment of Heart Valve Disease
Valvular Stenosis –
- Balloon valvuloplasty relieves many symptoms of heart valve disease, but may not cure it. The condition can worsen over time. You still may need medicines to treat symptoms or surgery to repair or replace the faulty valve. Balloon valvuloplasty has a shorter recovery time than surgery. Balloon Valvuloplasty can be used when a catheter with a balloon attached to it is inserted into the heart through a blood vessel, and the balloon is then blown up to fully open up the valve, then it is deflated and both the balloon and the catheter are removed.
Valvular Insufficiency –
- You will have to either repair or replace your heart valve, repair is preferred, however not all heart valves can be replaced. In heart valve replacement, your surgeon removes the damaged valve and replaces it with a mechanical valve or a valve made from cow, pig or human heart tissue (biological tissue valve). Biological tissue valves degenerate over time, and often eventually need to be replaced. People with mechanical valves will need to take blood-thinning medications for life to prevent blood clots.
Advancements:
Percutaneous treatment of valve disease has been, without uncertainty, the most energizing and quick moving change in the field as of late. Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is getting to be across the board, and there is a colossal volume of research in progress to evaluate the degree of its potential applications. As of not long ago, patients with symptomatic serious aortic stenosis who were felt to be too high hazard for medical procedure confronted a grim guess, regularly extremely constrained by manifestations, for example, chest agony, dyspnoea and syncope. The presentation of a bioprosthesis, produced using ox-like or porcine pericardium and mounted on a stent, which can be sent over the stenosed valve utilizing a percutaneous methodology, has upset the way to deal with these patients. This progression can enable the specialists to do the medical procedure in a superior manner and it can likewise enable patients to soothe it. Of the considerable number of fields in cardiovascular prescription, valvular coronary illness is conceivably the most quickly changing at the present time. With epic advancements in essential science and potential therapeutic treatments, imaging evaluation and colossal strides in treatment methodologies, there is an abundance of new proof going to the fore.
Systems affected by Heart Valve Disease
There are no systems affected by the specific heart valve disease, but for cardiovascular disease.
Implications
Economic
- The cost of a Heart Valve Replacement is extremely high, which will create a divide between rich and poor, about who can afford to get the surgery, which is crucial in trying to improve the situation in this disease
Social
- As the person with heart valve disease cannot walk and move his body a lot, so he’ll stay in home always , resting, so his social relations will get weak.
Cultural
- Hinduism and organ donation. No religious law prohibits Hindus from donating their organs and tissues. Life after death is a strong belief of Hindus and is an ongoing process of rebirth. This could be seen as reflecting positively on the concept of organ donation and transplantation.