Valve Disease
What Is Heart Valve Disease?
Heart valve disease is a condition in which one or more of your heart valves don't work properly. There are four heart valves: the tricuspid, pulmonary, mitral, and aortic valves.
These valves have tissue flaps that open and close with each heartbeat. The flaps make sure blood flows in the right direction through your heart's four chambers and to the rest of your body.
Healthy Heart Cross-Section
The illustration shows a cross-section of a healthy heart, including the four heart valves. The blue arrow shows the direction in which oxygen-poor blood flows from the body to the lungs. The red arrow shows the direction in which oxygen-rich blood flows from the lungs to the rest of the 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 can make your heart work harder and affect its ability to pump blood.
Heart Valve Problems
Heart valves can have three basic kinds of problems:
- 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.
- In the United States, backflow is most often due to prolapse. "Prolapse" is when the flaps of the valve flop or bulge back into an upper heart chamber during a heartbeat. Prolapse mainly affects the mitral valve, but it can affect the other valves as well.
- Stenosis occurs when the flaps of a valve thicken, stiffen, or fuse together. This prevents the heart valve from fully opening, and not enough blood flows through the valve. Some valves can have both stenosis and backflow problems.
- Atresia occurs when a heart valve lacks an opening for blood to pass through.
You can be born with heart valve disease or you can acquire it later in life. Heart valve disease that develops before birth is called a congenital
valve disease. Congenital heart valve disease can occur alone or with other congenital heart defects.
Congenital heart valve disease usually involves pulmonary or aortic valves that don't form properly. These valves may not have enough tissue flaps, they may be the wrong size or shape, or they may lack an opening through which blood can flow properly.
Acquired heart valve disease usually involves the aortic or mitral valves. Although the valve is normal at first, disease can cause problems to develop over time.