Rheumatic heart disease is usually curable, and common treatments include surgery or interventional procedures for radical treatment. In some patients, the progression to severe heart failure, where the structure and function of the heart is severely altered, may be limited.
1. Surgery: The primary treatment for rheumatic heart disease relies on surgery, including direct junction dissection and mitral valve replacement for mitral stenosis, mitral annuloplasty for mitral valve insufficiency, aortic replacement for aortic stenosis or insufficiency, and tricuspid valve dissection and prosthetic replacement for tricuspid valve lesions.
2. Interventional surgery: Interventional techniques are also used in the treatment of valvular disease. For example, percutaneous balloon mitral valvuloplasty, transcatheter prosthetic aortic valve implantation. The interventional procedures have higher requirements, including the choice of intervention (e.g., evaluation of the mechanism of regurgitation, prediction of reparability, and indications and contraindications for interventional therapy), monitoring and evaluation of the efficacy of the repair and intervention procedures, and follow-up in the long term.
The choice of surgical approach needs to be based on the patient’s age, symptoms and cardiac function, co-morbidities and complications, as well as the experience of the operator, the patient’s life expectancy, and expectations for postoperative life. Suffering from rheumatic heart disease should be treated promptly and under the guidance of a doctor.