Recent Advances in the Treatment of Heart Valve Diseases

Recent Advances in the Treatment of Heart Valve Diseases

Heart valve diseases has proved one of the fastest moving areas in heart medicine over years, with exciting advances in all aspects, especially diagnosis, assessment, and treatment.

What is heart valve disease?

Heart valves are crucial for normal functioning of the heart. There are four heart valves i.e. tricuspid, mitral, pulmonary, and aortic valve. These valves helps the blood to flow in the right directions. When one or more of these valves is damaged, your heart needs to work harder to pump the blood, which may disrupt the blood flow in the body.

Aortic valve disease is common and clinically significant among heart valve diseases.

Heart valve disease can be regurgitation (blood leaks backward through the valve), stenosis (valve becomes narrow and restricts blood flow).

Treatment for heart valve disease include medicines and surgery. Medicines can be used to relieve symptoms and surgery is done to repair or replace the diseased valves.

Recent advances in the treatment

Aortic valve replacement via a sternotomy and cardiopulmonary bypass are the treatment of choice for the patients with symptomatic aortic stenosis with very tolerable/ acceptable risk. However, in patients with advanced age and multiple comorbidities, surgery is considered a significant risk. Advances in the catheter-based heart interventions assures the use of minimally invasive surgical approaches for the treatment.

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI)

Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI)/ Replacement (TAVR) is preferred alternative to surgical valve replacement. It is minimally invasive, safe, effective, reproducible, and applicable to most patients. It is used for the treatment of patients who have intermediate risk with severe aortic stenosis, who are inoperable/ at-risk to undergo surgery, and who are at high-risk.

Advantages:

• Minimal pain
• Minimal bleeding
• Faster recovery
• Shorter hospitals stay
• Reduced risk of infection

It is an effective option to improve quality-of-life and longevity in patients who have limited choices for repair of the aortic valve.

Balloon valvotomy

Valve stenosis can be treated by balloon valvotomy. Balloon valvotomy is a procedure to widen the narrowed (stenotic) valves. It is a non-surgical procedure in which a special catheter is sent into blood vessel through the groin and sent to the heart.

Treatment of heart valve disease depends on several factors such as type of valve disease, severity of the damage, age, and medical history. Your cardiologist is the right person to recommend a treatment option and if you are a right candidate for a minimally invasive valve repair or replacement.

Inputs by Dr. Sanjeev Kalkekar, Consultant, Interventional Cardiology, Apollo Hospitals Navi Mumbai