Valvular Heart Disease

Hello,

I am doctor Krishna Prasad cardiothoracic surgeon practicing in Mumbai.

I would like to discuss with you all about valvular heart disease, so heart has four valves and valves can get affected by various diseases, especially rheumatic heart disease and also degenerative disease, which is due to aging and infection and other causes of valve disease.

So when the valve is diseased, the heart valve either become stenotic that means orifice or the opening becomes tight or it can be regurgitant or in other words leaking, so either it can be a tight lesion or can be regurgitant leaking lesion or it can be combined, so what we do? the surgical management in these cases are two options, one is valve replacement and other one is valve repair.

Replacement, we have two options by using metal valve or otherwise known as mechanical valve and other one is tissue valve. Tissue valve prepared from other animals or from cadavers, so there are various pros and cons and where to use there are guidelines so at a young age usually we put mechanical valve but the only problem with mechanical valve is patient has to be on long-term anticoagulant, but the advantage of mechanical valve is It stays longer because life is long with the metal valve.

Tissue valve is opted in old age above 65 or so, the main advantage is no need to take anticoagulation for a long time but the disadvantages is that new valve can undergo destruction early so re-surgeries are more common with tissue valve.

The other option as I told it's a valve repair, valve repair is possible especially in mitral, aortic valves when there is regurgitant lesions or stenotic lesions. We can address disease pathology and try to bring the valve near normal. The main advantage of having a repair is patient retains his own native valve and there is nothing like the natural valve, so no need for any anticoagulation and other thing is the disease may recur and may require surgery redo surgery at a later date, which can be performed whenever time is suitable and he develops the disease further. Otherwise repair is always the first option when it is possible, beyond any further details you can contact lybrate.

Thanks