Heart valve disease

People from across the nation and throughout the world come to Aurora for our expertise in heart valve disease. In fact, we have a specialized heart center dedicated to this common but often complex condition. Here you’ll find a team of highly skilled specialists, the latest treatments – and personalized care for your best heart health. And with the most advanced procedures that are less invasive, you’ll spend less time in the hospital and more time doing the things you love.

What is heart valve disease?

Your heart has four valves that open and close with each heartbeat. When they’re working properly, they make sure your blood flows in one direction as it goes through the four chambers of your heart and on to the rest of your body.

With heart valve disease, one or more of the four valves doesn’t open and close the way they should. The four valve diseases are aortic valve disease, mitral valve disease, tricuspid valve disease and pulmonary valve disease.

Understanding the types of heart valve disease

There are three main conditions within heart valve disease:

• Atresia: In this heart defect present at birth, the valve isn’t formed properly and blood can’t flow through.
• Regurgitation: This means the valve doesn’t close tightly and blood leaks backward.
• Stenosis: With stenosis, the valve thickens, stiffens or fuses with other tissue and can’t open all the way, preventing blood from flowing properly.

Heart valve disease symptoms

An unusual heartbeat or a heart murmur is often the most common symptom of heart valve disease. You may also experience:

• Chest discomfort, especially when active or out in cold weather
• Dizziness
• Rapid weight gain
• Shortness of breath or trouble breathing, especially during normal activities or when lying down
• Swelling in your ankles, feet, legs, abdomen or neck veins
• Weakness or fatigue

Heart valve disease causes

You may have been born with heart valve disease. Or, you may have developed it due to other conditions such as:

• Heart attack
• Atherosclerosis
• High blood pressure
• Autoimmune disorder
• Metabolic disorder
• Certain cancers and treatments

Heart valve disease diagnosis

You may not even know you have heart valve disease until the condition becomes more serious. We can help you identify heart valve disease as early as possible so you can get the treatment you need.

At your annual physical exam, talk with your doctor about your heart health, family history and any symptoms. They’ll listen to your heart with a stethoscope to check for a heart murmur and may order additional tests for you, such as:

• Cardiac catheterization
• Chest X-ray, CT scan or MRI
• Echocardiogram, including transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE)
• Electrocardiogram (EKG)
• Electrophysiology study
• Stress test

Find out more about our heart and vascular testing and diagnosis.

Heart valve disease treatment

At Aurora, we work together with you on a treatment plan that’s tailored to you. Your plan may include medication and lifestyle changes, like eating a healthy diet, quitting smoking and limiting intense exercise.

We may also recommend repairing or replacing the damaged valve. Within the top ranks for having the best outcomes, people from throughout the nation and even the world come to us for these procedures that include:

• Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), a minimally invasive procedure where we use a thin, flexible tube to replace the damaged valve with an artificial one
• Balloon valvuloplasty, where we thread a catheter with a small balloon on the end through a blood vessel from the groin to the aortic valve and inflate the balloon to stretch the heart valve
• Valve repair or replacement surgery, where our expert surgeons fix the problem through minimally invasive procedures or open-heart surgery

Are you at risk for heart disease?

Knowing your risk factors of heart disease – the leading cause of death in the U.S. – can help you lower your chances of developing it. Our heart health quiz estimates your risk, determines which of your risk factors are controllable and gives you an idea what to do next based on your results.

Take the heart health quiz