When blood is unable to move through the heart and flow to the rest of the body as it should, damaged heart valves are a likely culprit. Heart valve procedures work to restore this ability and avoid mortal consequences.
Significance
Valvular heart disease occurs when one of the four heart valves malfunctions and fails to open or close as designed. This may initially be treated with medication, but surgery for repair or replacement of the valve will often be necessary.
Identification
What are the benefits of heart valve procedures? "Heart valve problems that benefit from surgery include congenital valve disorders, leaky valves that don't close properly (regurgitation), infected valves, and narrowed valves that don't open correctly (stenosis)," says the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Benefits
The benefits of heart valve procedures are the reduction or elimination of debilitating symptoms including chest pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness and fainting. Defective heart valves must be repaired or replaced in order to avoid consequences that can often be fatal.
Considerations
Repair of a damaged valve is the preferred treatment because this does not require introduction of a foreign object into your body. "The surgeon removes the diseased portion of the valve, and reconstructs it using the surrounding natural tissue," according to the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
Durability
Replacement valves are either mechanical or biological. Mechanical valves are durable but require life-long aspirin therapy; biological replacements require no long-term medication but last less than 20 years.
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