AMITA Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital issued the following announcement on Dec. 12.
Do you ever get the sense that something’s "just not right?" Do you chalk it up to getting older? Aging naturally causes a lot of physical changes, so it’s tempting to write them off as you would the occasional wrinkle or gray hair.
Some of these changes, however, are warning signs of serious heart problems — clogged coronary arteries, irregular heartbeat, heart valve damage or even heart failure — yet they can easily be misattributed to stress, a sedentary lifestyle or weight gain. These five red flags should never be ignored, and are all caused by the same culprit:
Meet Your Mitral Valve
Your mitral valve makes sure that blood flows smoothly from your heart’s upper left chamber (left atrium) into your lower left chamber (left ventricle), which then pumps oxygenated blood throughout your body. If there is a structural problem with this valve, small amounts of blood can flow back into the right atrium, a condition known as mitral regurgitation. The valve can also become narrowed and not perform properly (known as mitral stenosis). Over time, these malfunctions can become life-threatening.
"Heart valve disease, irregular heartbeat and diseases of the coronary arteries (which provide blood to the heart) can be interconnected," explains Anupama Shivaraju, MD, interventional cardiologist and structural heart program director at AMITA Health Resurrection Medical Center Chicago. "Sometimes fixing one might help another. For example, repairing the mitral valve can significantly reduce the risk of persistent atrial fibrillation (aFib), which can cause a fatal stroke."
5 Warning Signs of Heart Valve Disease
If you are you experiencing any of these symptoms, talk to your primary care doctor or cardiologist:
- Shortness of breath during physical exertion
- Increasing tiredness or fatigue and inability to do things you used to do easily
- Trouble sleeping due to breathing difficulties (despite using two or three pillows)
- Swelling in your legs
- Dizziness or fainting
"Valve problems, especially in the mitral valve, are not always limited to older patients. Young people with rheumatic heart disease can develop valve disease, and some people have congenital birth defects in their valves, including the mitral valve," says Dr. Shivaraju.
Talk to a Doctor About Your Symptoms
A primary care doctor or cardiologist will help you improve your health, prevent a potentially serious heart event and get the most out of life.
Find a primary care doctor near you
Find a cardiologist near you
A Little Clip Can Make a Big Difference
Once, problems with the internal structure of the heart and its valves could only be fixed with open-heart surgery.
Not anymore!
The AMITA Health Heart & Vascular Institute is widely recognized for pioneering and deploying many of the most advanced treatment options for structural heart problems, including the minimally invasive MitraClip™ procedure to repair a leaky mitral valve.
This catheter-based procedure allows doctors to repair the leak without opening the chest or temporarily stopping the heart. That’s why the relative risk to the patient and recovery time are significantly decreased.
"The clip does not prolong life, but it does improve functional capacity, such as walking farther without experiencing the symptoms that brought them to us for treatment," says Dr. Shivaraju. "These improvements usually lead to a higher quality of life for the patient and the family."
A "Wholecare" Approach to Heart Valve Care
Dr. Shivaraju and her colleagues can diagnose structural problems with the heart, including mitral valve disease, with the help of an echocardiogram (images of the inside of the heart produced by sound waves). Diagnosis is accompanied by a Wholecare plan that factors in your physical, emotional and spiritual needs.
"We first treat patients with a heart failure medication regimen, offering education on the importance of proper diet and medicine compliance — no medicine can help you if you don't take it as prescribed," said Dr. Shivaraju. "If, despite these measures, they are still having symptoms, we use MitraClip™ to minimize the leak and improve their symptoms."
For patients who are considered high-risk for open-heart surgery, or for whom surgery is not likely to be effective in fixing the mitral valve problem, AMITA Health offers MitraClip™ as a treatment option. And it is just one of many innovative treatments employed by Dr. Shivaraju and her colleagues.
"As we continue to expand the comprehensive cardiovascular program at AMITA Resurrection, it's really important to have every type of treatment available, including the latest minimally invasive procedures such as transcatheter atrial valve replacement (TAVR) and WATCHMAN™ implant for patients with aFib," says Dr. Shivaraju.
Original source can be found here.
Source: AMITA Adventist La Grange Memorial Hospital
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