Multivalvular Heart Disease

With multivalvular heart disease, more than one valve of your heart is suffering from stenosis, regurgitation or some type of defect. Often referred to as heart valve disease, this condition can lead to an improper opening or closure of the affected valves, causing a restriction in blood flow or a leakage of blood, respectively. Regardless of the valvular issue, your heart inevitably must work harder than normal to pump blood throughout your body. As time goes by and the condition is left untreated, the cardiac muscles can weaken, resulting in serious complications.

Types

• When you suffer from multivalvular heart disease, it's more so a combination of different valvular disorders. Some of the more common are aortic valve stenosis, mitral valve stenosis and pulmonary valve stenosis. With any of these conditions, the affected valves are abnormally narrow, which doesn't allow them to open as they should, restricting blood flow to the heart itself or other internal organs. It's also possible that one valve is suffering from a stenosis while another is experiencing a regurgitation, as would be seen in aortic valve regurgitation, mitral valve regurgitation or pulmonary valve regurgitation. In this situation, the valve doesn't close as it should normally, causing a backflow in blood and a decrease in blood flow. In either condition, your heart must overcompensate for the issue, leading to a weakening of the cardiac muscles.

Symptoms

• Though the valves affected by the disease are different in each person, the symptoms of the various conditions are generally the same. One of the most common is a shortness of breath, due to the ineffectual transport of oxygen, but you may also begin to suffer from fatigue, lightheadedness, faintness, irregular heartbeats, heart murmurs, cough and chest pain, tightness or discomfort. Sometimes, a valvular problem, especially those linked to the mitral valve, can prompt a certain amount of swelling within the feet and ankles.

Origins

• For many multivalvular heart diseases, the condition is actually congenital, meaning that the defect formed prior to birth. For others, the valvular heart disease is acquired, in that the stenosis or regurgitation developed out of age, infection or even high blood pressure. In some situations, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), such as syphilis can eventually cause regurgitation in one or more of the valves.

Complications

• Of all the complications in multivalvular heart disease, congestive heart failure is by far the most common. In this event, the heart muscles weaken to the point where they can no longer pump enough blood to meet the demands of your body. However, it is also possible to suffer from fibrillation (quivering) within one or more chambers of the heart, arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), cardiac arrest (cessation of heartbeat), heart attack (blood restriction), hypertension (high blood pressure), pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure isolated to the arteries of the lungs) or cardiac hypertrophy (muscular thickening).

Treatment

• As with almost any condition, the type of valvular issue often dictates the course of treatment. Yet most doctors subscribe to more conservative approaches to care before any sort of invasive procedure is used to remedy the condition, so medications are typically the first line of defense. These may include blood pressure medications, diuretic, antibiotics (in cases of infection) and blood thinners. If these fail to provide results, you may need a surgical procedure to correct the valvular problems, such as the repair or replacement of the valve, as well as valvuloplasty, where a device is fed into the heart to widen any stenosis that has taken place.