What you need to know about heart valve disease

More than five million people in the United States are diagnosed with a valvular heart disease each year. To understand heart valve disease, it is helpful to know more about how the heart works. Your heart is made up of four chambers. Chambers are connected by valves that are opened and closed by flaps, also called leaflets, that keep blood flowing through your heart in the correct direction with each heartbeat.

What is heart valve disease?

The term heart valve disease covers any condition that disrupts the way the valves in your heart function, affecting how blood flows through your heart. When your valves don’t work properly, your heart needs to work harder, causing it to weaken over time.

Types of heart valve disease

There are multiple types of heart valve irregularities that cause heart valve disease, including:

• Stenosis: The valve opening is too narrow either because the flaps have become stiff or have fused together. This prevents adequate blood flow through the narrowed valve.
• Atresia: Often diagnosed shortly after birth, your heart valve is not fully formed with an opening that allows blood to flow across your heart’s chambers.
• Regurgitation: A valve does not fully close during a heartbeat and blood leaks back into your heart, causing it to pump harder to compensate. This can also be referred to as “backward flow” or a “leaky valve.”
• Prolapse: When your valve doesn’t close tightly because its leaflets malfunction, bulging forward when your heart beats (often leading to regurgitation).

What are the risk factors of heart valve disease?

Heart valve diseases can be caused by a valve that didn’t develop correctly before birth, known as a congenital heart defect. This valve disease is usually discovered at birth or in early infancy.

However, anyone can develop a heart valve disease at any time in their life. If you develop a heart valve disease you weren’t born with, causes can be attributed to many factors, including:

• Age: Individuals 65 and older are most at risk of developing valvular diseases.
• Gender: Males are more likely to develop heart valve diseases.
• Health history: Family history of heart disease or heart valve disease, or personal history of heart disease, including heart failure, heart rhythm issues or heart attack can increase your risk.
• Current health conditions: Improperly treated high blood pressure or diabetes, heart or blood infections, having a pacemaker, calcification, thoracic aortic aneurysm or various disease like lupus, rheumatic fever or Marfan syndrome, or radiation treatment of certain cancers can contribute to valve disease.

Certain lifestyle factors can also increase your chance of developing heart valve disease including:

• tobacco use
• eating unhealthy food
• lack of physical activity
• obesity

Symptoms to watch for

Heart valve disease can feel like a rapid fluttering sensation or tightening in your chest. Similar to what is felt during a heart attack, you may feel dizzy and short of breath with even light activity.

It’s important to note, some people with heart valve diseases may not experience symptoms, but some to watch for include:

• shortness of breath, even at rest
• fatigue or tiredness
• heart palpitations or feeling like your heart “skipped a beat”
• chest discomfort or pain, especially during physical activity
• feeling lightheaded or dizzy
• sudden weight gain
• swelling in your feet, stomach or abdomen, also known as edema

Even if you don’t notice symptoms, it’s important to keep up with your routine physicals. During a routine exam, or if you’ve been feeling “off,” your doctor may find less noticeable signs of heart valve disease as the condition worsens, such as:

• fluid in your lungs
• an enlarged heart
• heart murmur

How is heart valve disease diagnosed?

Many heart valve problems are first identified by the presence of a murmur discovered when a provider is examining a patient’s heartbeat with a stethoscope.

To further determine if a heart valve disease is present, you will see a cardiologist, a doctor specializing in heart health, who may order the following cardiac imaging tests:

• echocardiogram
• heart MRI
• chest X-ray
• cardiac CT
• stress test

You may be asked to repeat imaging tests over time, allowing your cardiologist to see the progression of your heart valve disease, as well as show how your treatment is working. Repetitive imaging also helps your cardiologist make decisions about your future treatment.

Because valvular disease can worsen over time, your provider may assign your stage of disease with a letter A, B, C, or D, in which D is the most severe.

What are treatments for heart valve disease?

Heart valve disease can be life-threatening if not treated properly. Though damage from heart valve disease can’t be completely fixed or reversed, there are multiple ways to treat heart valve disease, depending on your heart’s specific needs and your personal health, including:

• type of valve disease
• severity of damage
• age
• medical history

Treatments prescribed by your cardiologist may include medication or surgery, or both. It’s important to keep your cardiologist informed of changes to your health or lifestyle to help them provide you with the appropriate treatment, such as:

• medications to treat symptoms or prevent the heart valve condition from getting worse
• procedures or surgery to repair or replace a faulty heart valve, which can bring your heart closer to its natural function

If left untreated, heart valve disease can lead to:

• additional heart problems like arrhythmia, infection, heart failure, heart attack or cardiac arrest
• blood clots or stroke

How to prevent heart valve disease

Although you can’t change some risk factors, like growing older, there are things you can do that may reduce your risk of heart valve disease:

• Make lifestyle changes like being physically active, eating healthy foods and maintaining a healthy weight.
• Manage contributing conditions by getting treated for infections before they spread to your blood or heart or continue medications to manage blood pressure and/or cholesterol.
• Don’t use tobacco products or recreational drugs.

Living well with heart valve disease

Heart valve disease cannot be cured, but you can live your life as usual if you manage it well with medications and/or surgery as recommended by your cardiologist.

To keep your valvular disease from progressing, maintain regular visits with your primary care provider and cardiologist. Discuss any changes in health, or any suspected heart changes with your providers.

Continue working towards a heart healthy lifestyle including eating well and exercising as allowed.