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Mitral valve disease affects the way blood flows from the left atrium of your heart to the left ventricle, which squeezes hard enough to push oxygen-laden blood throughout your body.
The mitral valve regulates blood flowing from the left atrium to the ventricle, opening to allow the blood to move forward and closing to keep it moving in the right direction with each beat of your heart.
Mitral valve disease can cause the valve to leak or narrow. Sometimes mitral valve disease has no symptoms, but often causes serious issues.
If the leakage or narrowing of the mitral valve is severe and the appropriate amount of blood fails to move through the heart, patients can feel very tired and short of breath. The heart’s extra effort to pump sufficient blood out to the body can enlarge and weaken the heart muscle. The result can be heart failure.
The cardiologists and other specialists at the Norton Heart & Vascular Institute Structural Heart Program have the experience and expertise to know when treatment is required for mitral valve disease.
Often, mitral valve disease symptoms can be managed with medication or lifestyle changes, but sometimes treatment of the condition itself requires minimally invasive mitral valve repair or replacement. Some patients may need open heart surgery.
Our team of medical providers will examine your case, bringing their range of viewpoints to the discussion and arriving at a customized treatment plan for your condition.
The broad types of mitral valve disease include mitral valve regurgitation and mitral valve stenosis.
In cases of mitral valve regurgitation, the leaflets on the valve, which open and close with each beat of the heart, aren’t closing tightly. The resulting leak allows blood to flow backward when the left ventricle pumps blood out to the rest of the body.
Because blood moves backward through the leaky valve, this causes the heart to work harder to keep blood moving. This weakens the heart muscle, which can lead to heart failure.
Mitral valve prolapse is a condition that can cause regurgitation. In cases of mitral valve prolapse, the valve’s leaflets have become floppy and fall back into the left atrium when the left ventricle contracts. The condition can get in the way of the valve closing, forcing blood to flow backward.
Other causes of mitral regurgitation include heart valve infection, rheumatic fever, heart attack and a congenital heart defect.
In some patients, performance of the mitral valve will decline slowly over time. Some people with mitral valve regurgitation might not have symptoms for many years.
Signs of mitral regurgitation include:
Mitral valve stenosis occurs when the valve doesn’t open as wide as it should or has narrowed. This reduces the amount of oxygen-rich blood from the lungs making its way out to the rest of your body. The result is feeling tired and short of breath. Blood held back in the left atrium can cause it to enlarge and force fluid into your lungs.
In addition to fatigue and shortness of breath, mitral valve stenosis symptoms can include dizziness, palpitations and chest pain. Untreated, mitral valve stenosis can lead to atrial fibrillation, pulmonary hypertension or heart failure.
Mitral valve stenosis can be caused by rheumatic fever, a complication of strep throat. Mitral stenosis as a result of rheumatic fever typically won’t become apparent for decades after the infection. The infection can cause heart inflammation, and over time, the mitral valve leaflets become less mobile. With age, some people develop severe calcification of their mitral valve, resulting in narrowing. Both surgical and minimally invasive techniques are available to treat this condition.
Norton Heart & Vascular Institute offers advanced care at all of our adult-service hospitals to save hearts and lives.
Norton Heart & Vascular Institute offers patient resources to support you and your family, including free classes for people of all ages who want to improve cardiovascular health or are living with a heart condition.