What is mitral valve regurgitation?
Your heart can be thought of as a little room with doors going in and out of it. One of the doors in particular, which is located in the lower left side of your heart, is called the mitral valve. Mitral valve regurgitation is basically when this door stops operating properly.
What happens when I have mitral valve regurgitation?
Basically, the little door, the mitral valve, doesn’t open and shut properly. It get stuck, it refuses to swing smoothly. Instead of the blood flowing out, and staying out, flowing on through your body and reenergizing your organs and muscles, it sloshes right back through the door. When the blood sloshes back through the door, back through the mitral valve, your heart suddenly has to work twice as hard to pump and regulate blood flow. Over time, this can wear your heart down completely; it can lead to heart failure, in fact.
Are there different kinds of mitral valve regurgitation?
Yes, there are two kinds. The first kind, which is called chronic mitral valve regurgitation, happens over a long, long period of time, it develops slowly and steadily. It creeps up, as it were. There are many different causes of chronic mitral valve regurgitation, different kinds of heart maladies that cause your mitral valve to swell up, to become large in some way and therefore not open and close like it’s supposed to. Rheumatic fever, for example, can scar the heart tissue, causing a buildup that keeps the door from shutting. The blood goes out, and comes back in. Your heart is like any other machine: if it’s overloaded with work, it’ll eventually cease to operate. The second kind of mitral valve regurgitation is called acute mitral valve regurgitation. This happens swiftly, suddenly, without warning. So much blood flows back into your heart that it’s shocked and stunned. This sort of mitral valve regurgitation is usually caused by heart attack or heart infection.
What are the symptoms of mitral valve regurgitation?
If your case of mitral valve regurgitation is a mild, gentle one, you may never suffer any symptoms. If it’s more than that, however, you can suffer hurtful and irritating symptoms for a long, long time, sometimes without realizing it. The bad thing about this is that the effects of the symptoms can suddenly become manifest as you grow older. Symptoms include shortness of breath, which can get worse and worse until you’re short of breath even while you’re sleeping. Other symptoms include being tired all the time, listless, having no energy. Symptoms that are especially irritating are chronic coughing and rapid heartbeat, and are usually associated with acute mitral valve regurgitation.
What are the treatments available for mitral valve regurgitation?
With chronic mitral valve regurgitation, your doctor can diagnose you when you go in for a regular heart checkup. In other cases, a common effect of this more mild type is a heart murmur. When you go in to your doctor to find out the cause of your murmur, he or she will diagnose chronic mitral valve regurgitation. In either case, this highlights the importance of regular checkups for heart health. You don’t want to be surprised suddenly and find out that you’ve had a condition creeping along for years that could have been stopped and remedied. Treatments for acute mitral valve condition have a much narrower range, because usually it won’t be diagnosed until you’ve suffered a heart attack and are lying in the emergency room. There are lots of medications available for the treatment of mitral valve regurgitation. Some treatment medications widen the blood vessels, which in turn assists the heart in pumping out blood like it’s supposed too. Other treatment medications prevent your blood from clotting, regulate your heart rate, and stop diseases before they occur.