Heart Valve Treatment Options
If you have valve disease, it’s extremely important to choose the right treatment. It’s a decision you should make in close cooperation with your doctor. Some of the factors you’ll need to consider when choosing a treatment option include:
- The benefits and risks of each type of treatment
- Your age
- Your specific medical condition
- Medications you may be taking
- Your lifestyle needs and goals
Unfortunately, there are no medicines that can cure heart valve disease. Medicines can often successfully treat symptoms and delay problems for many years. So can lifestyle changes like eating a healthy diet, quitting smoking, and getting regular exercise. Eventually, though, you may need surgery to repair or replace a faulty heart valve.
Your doctor might have the following goals in mind when recommending a valve disease treatment:
- Preventing, treating, or relieving the symptoms of other related heart conditions
- Protecting heart valves from further damage
- Repairing or replacing faulty valves when they cause severe symptoms or become life threatening. Replacement valves can be man-made or biological.
If you’re diagnosed with heart valve disease, your doctor may prescribe medication for you. This medication may help relieve symptoms and decrease the risk of further damage to your heart.
Your doctor may prescribe medicines to:
- Treat heart failure. Heart failure medicines widen blood vessels and rid the body of excess fluid. Heart failure means the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs.
- Lower high blood pressure or high blood cholesterol. “Blood pressure” is the force of blood pushing against the walls of the arteries as the heart pumps. If this pressure rises and stays high over time, it can harm the body in many ways. Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that’s found in all cells of the body. People who have high blood cholesterol have a greater chance of getting heart disease.
- Treat coronary heart disease (CHD). CHD medicines can reduce your heart’s workload and relieve symptoms. In coronary heart disease (CHD), a waxy substance called plaque builds up inside the coronary arteries. These arteries bring oxygen-rich blood to your heart muscle. If the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your heart muscle is reduced or blocked, you could have chest pain or a heart attack.
- Prevent arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats). During an arrhythmia, the heart can beat too fast, too slow, or with an irregular rhythm. Some arrhythmias can be extremely serious. During an arrhythmia, the heart may not be able to pump enough blood to the body. Lack of blood flow can damage the brain, heart, and other organs.
- Thin the blood and prevent clots (if you have a man-made replacement valve). These medicines also are prescribed for mitral stenosis or other valve defects that raise the risk of blood clots.
Although it can help, medication can’t reverse the damage to your heart valve. Sometimes, your doctor may need to take further action, like recommending heart valve repair or valve replacement surgery.
Both procedures are used often and are highly effective at treating heart valve conditions. Repairing or replacing a valve can also prevent lasting damage to your heart.
When possible, heart valve repair is preferred over heart valve replacement. However, heart valve repair surgery is harder to do than valve replacement. Also, not all valves can be repaired. For example, aortic and pulmonary valves often have to be replaced.
Conventional Surgery or Minimally Invasive Surgery?
- During conventional “open chest” surgery, the surgeon makes one large incision (cut) in the middle of the chest and breastbone to access the heart. A heart-lung machine takes over the job of circulating blood throughout the body during the procedure, because the heart must be still and quiet while the surgeon performs heart valve surgery.
- Minimally invasive surgery is newer and less invasive than traditional surgery. It uses smaller incisions (cuts) to reach the heart valves. New surgeries tend to cause less pain and have a lower risk of infection. Recovery time also tends to be shorter—2 to 4 weeks versus 6 to 8 weeks for traditional surgery. Your surgeon will evaluate the best surgical approach for you.