Everything You Need To Know About The Valve Surgery

If you have ever seen the heart's structure, you will see there are four essential valves inside. These are the bicuspid, tricuspid, pulmonary semilunar, and iodic semilunar valves. These act as doorways, controlling the flow of blood and its direction inside the heart. Since the heart applies pressure to force the blood from one compartment to another, it is essential to have such doors to prevent blood backflow into the source chamber or location.

From the above explanation, you can easily understand how vital these valves are for the proper functioning of the heart. Failure to open and close at the appropriate time may lead to several consequences, including myocardial infarction and heart failure. This is why doctors do not take any chance whenever they find the valves malfunctioning or unable to function correctly due to blockades. They always opt for heart valve surgery as the ratio of success to that failure is high. In this article, we will walk you through the benefits and risks of heart valve surgery that you should know.

Types of heart valve surgery

Before we discuss anything, it would be better to understand the different types of heart valve surgery. Although the benefits and risks are almost similar in every type, knowing the classifications will give you an upper hand before you consult your cardiologist.

  • Transcatheter Aortic valve replacement

  • Bioprosthetic valve replacement

  • Transcatheter mitral valve replacement

  • Transcatheter mitral valve repair

  • Balloon valvuloplasty

Benefits of heart valve surgery

  1. Since you know the five heart valve surgeries, it's time to understand the benefits of getting this treatment done right on time. Unless and until you know the advantages, you won't be able to decide whether you want the treatment. Keeping this in mind, we have discussed how heart valve surgery can help you.

  2. First and foremost, heart valve surgery will help clear the valves' blocks and ensure they can open or close correctly and on time.

  3. There will be no cases of blood backflow into the source chamber from where it was pushed.

  4. Another significant advantage of heart valve surgery is the appropriate heart rate. It is usually determined by the closing and opening of the valves and perceived through the lab dub sound. Irregular heartbeat is often the result of malfunctioning valves. Therefore, if you get it treated right on time, you won't have to worry about regularities in the heart rate.

  5. With the heart valve surgery, the valves will open and close properly and ensure blood flow remains consistent as per the expectations. Therefore, the coronary arteries will receive the blood flow, and you won't have to worry about sudden myocardial infarction due to a lack of oxygen.

Risks associated with heart valve surgery

  1. Although there are many benefits of heart valve surgery, we cannot avoid its risks. That's why we have listed some reasons you should be cautious about getting this treatment.

  2. The first risk that you should be aware of is the chance of internal bleeding. Often, bleeding happens at the site of stitches and incisions during open heart valve surgery.

  3. Fever, infection, and tenderness around the surgical area are common.

  4. You also need to be aware of not engaging in any strenuous activity because that can destroy the artificial valve placed during the replacement or cause the repaired valve to rupture.

Conclusion

This post gave you a brief on everything you should know about the benefits and risks of heart valve surgery. Therefore, you won't have to worry about not getting this treatment or the myths and prejudices about heart valve repair and replacement.