Heart valve surgery is a procedure to treat heart valve disease. Heart valve disease involves at least one of the four heart valves not working properly. Heart valves keep blood flowing in the correct direction through your heart. The four valves are the mitral valve, tricuspid valve, pulmonary valve, and aortic valve. Each valve has flaps — called leaflets for the mitral and tricuspid valves and cusps for the aortic and pulmonary valves. These flaps open and close once during each heartbeat. Valves that don’t open or close properly disrupt blood flow through your heart to your body.
In heart valve surgery, your surgeon repairs or replaces the affected heart valves. Many surgical approaches can be used to repair or replace heart valves, including open-heart surgery or minimally invasive heart surgery.
Dr. Priya Palimkar Is One of the Foremost Heart Valve Surgery Specialist in Pune
and the Best Heart Surgeon in Pune.
We Repair or Replace the Affected Heart Valves.
Believe it or not, heart transplantation is a relatively simple operation for a cardiac surgeon. In fact, the procedure actually consists of three operations.
The first operation is harvesting the heart from the donor. The donor is usually an unfortunate person who has suffered an irreversible brain injury, called “brain death“. Very often these are patients who have had major trauma to the head, for example, in an automobile accident. The victim’s organs, other than the brain, are working well with the help of medications and other “life support“ that may include a respirator or other devices. A team of physicians, nurses, and technicians goes to the hospital of the donor to remove donated organs once the brain death of the donor has been determined.
The removed organs are transported on ice to keep them alive until they can be implanted. For the heart, this is optimally less than six hours. So, the organs are often flown by airplane or helicopter to the recipient’s hospital.
Heart valve disease is a fairly common problem with the valves that keep your blood flowing in one direction through your heart. Medicines can help with the blood flow problems from a heart valve that isn’t working right, but sometimes that’s not enough. Your healthcare provider can tell you if you need to have your valve repaired or replaced.
Heart valve disease refers to any of several conditions that prevent one or more of the valves in your heart from working right. Left untreated, heart valve disease can cause your heart to work harder. This can reduce your quality of life and even become life-threatening. In many cases, your healthcare provider can do surgery or a minimally invasive procedure to repair or replace your heart valves, restoring normal function and allowing you to return to normal activities.
Coronary angiography is a test to find out if you have a blockage in a coronary artery. Your doctor will be concerned that you’re at risk of a heart attack if you have unstable angina, atypical chest pain, aortic stenosis, or unexplained heart failure. During coronary angiography, a contrast dye will be injected into your arteries through a catheter (thin, plastic tube), while your doctor watches how blood flows through your heart on an X-ray screen.This test is also known as a cardiac angiogram, catheter arteriography, or cardiac catheterization.
There are different types of heart valve disease, and it is possible for more than one valve to be affected.
Valvular stenosis
With valvular stenosis, the tissues forming the valve leaflets become stiffer, narrowing the valve opening and reducing the amount of blood that can flow through it. Mild narrowing may not reduce the overall functioning of your heart. However, the valve can become so narrow (stenotic) that it reduces your heart’s function, makes your heart pump harder and puts it under strain. As a result, the rest of your body may not get enough blood flow.
Valvular insufficiency
Valvular insufficiency (or regurgitation, incompetence, "leaky valve"), happens when the leaflets don’t close completely, letting blood leak backward across the valve. This backward flow is referred to as “regurgitant flow.” Your heart has to pump harder to make up for this backward flow, and the rest of your body may get less blood flow.
You can get a backward flow if you have mitral valve prolapse, a common problem in which the valve flaps go back into your left atrium when your heart beats.
Valvular atresia
Valvular atresia happens when a heart valve doesn’t form correctly before birth. This is usually diagnosed very early in infancy.