As we all know, the heart is like the engine of the human body, each of its beats (systole and diastole) that is, it shoots blood to the aorta, providing a constant supply of fresh blood to all organs of the body; it also returns the venous blood to the heart and oxygenates it into fresh blood through the lungs. The heart can do this function so perfectly, is the heart’s four magical valves play a key role. These four valves are called the aortic valve, pulmonary valve, mitral valve and tricuspid valve. Each valve is composed of two to three leaflets, which are thin, smooth and flexible when normal. Their opening and closing acts as a one-way valve so that blood can only flow from one direction to the other without backflow, while their caliber maintains a certain blood flow. Heart valve malformations or deformations caused by congenital or acquired causes that lead to mechanical blood flow disorders are called heart valve disease. Two conditions occur when a valve is diseased: one is a narrowing of the valve orifice, which is equivalent to an incomplete opening of the door, so that blood flow is blocked in the heart and does not flow smoothly; the other is an incomplete closing of the valve, which is equivalent to a closed door, so that blood flow flows in both forward and backward directions when the heart contracts. Both of these conditions can cause overload on the heart, insufficient blood supply to the body, and blood stasis in the lungs, which over time leads to heart failure and a series of organismal damages that endanger life. The main causes of valvular lesions are rheumatic, degenerative, and ischemic lesions as well as bacterial infections and congenital lesions, and even caused by trauma. When people feel shortness of breath, or even chest tightness and palpitations when climbing stairs or other general physical activities, and there is a murmur in the heart during physical examination, it suggests that they may have heart valve pathology, and they should go to a hospital cardiologist for examination.
Doctors determine the presence of heart valve disease through auscultation and color ultrasound examination of the heart. Treatment of heart valve disease includes medication and surgery. The purpose of drug treatment is to treat the cause of the disease, such as anti-rheumatic therapy for rheumatic activity; secondly, to provide adjunctive treatment for the accompanying symptoms, such as cardiac insufficiency with cardiac stimulants and diuretics to improve cardiac function, combined with atrial fibrillation with drugs to slow down the heart rate and anticoagulation therapy to prevent brain embolism. Since heart valve lesions are irreversible, once they appear, they only get progressively worse. Therefore, surgery is the single most effective treatment. When heart valve lesions are diagnosed, accompanied by heart enlargement, panic and shortness of breath after activity (manifestations of heart failure) or when new arrhythmias appear, surgery should be performed as soon as possible. The goal of surgery is to restore the physiological function of the valve: sufficiently unobstructed blood flow and unidirectional flow of blood.