Your cardiologist may recommend heart valve surgery to treat various heart valve diseases. Heart valve diseases involve one or more valves out of four heart valves. The heart valves function as gates that manage the correct direction of the blood flowing through the heart.

What are the different types of Heart Valves?

The four heart valves are:

• Mitral valves
• Aortic valves
• Tricuspid valves
• Pulmonary valves

Types of Heart Valve Surgery During a heart valve surgery, the heart surgeon replaces or repairs the affected heart valve. The type of surgery advised by your heart doctor depends on:

• Your age
• Your overall health
• The severity of your heart valve disease

Types of heart valve surgery:

Heart valve repair: During this surgery, your surgeon may:

• Patch holes in the valves of your heart
• Recreate flaps or valves
• Extracts excess tissue so that the valves can close tightly
• Repair or remove diseased parts of the valvular support system
• Tighten the rings of the valves

Heart valve replacement: The surgeon performs this surgery when your valves cannot be repaired. There are 2 types of valves:

• Mechanical Valves: They do not wear with time, but you may need to take lifelong blood thinning medicines to prevent blood clotting
• Biological valves can be made from cow, pig or human heart tissue and may need to be replaced over time as they tend to wear out with time.

Methods to do Heart Valve Surgery:

• Open heart surgery: Here, a surgeon creates a surgical cut in the middle of the chest to reach the heart
• Minimally invasive heart surgery: Here, the surgeon performs the surgery without causing major injury to bones and muscles

Advantages of minimally invasive heart valve surgery over traditional open heart surgery are:

• You will have a shorter hospital stay
• You will experience quicker recovery
• There will be minimal pain
• Low infection rate
• You are less susceptible to any post-operative heart rhythm disorders

Conditions necessitating Heart Valve Surgery

• Heart valve surgery may be needed in two conditions:
• Narrowing of heart valve or stenosis
• Leaky valve disease occurs when the blood starts flowing backwards Usually, heart valve surgery is done when you exhibit symptoms related to heart valve disease.

What are the risks associated with heart valve surgery? Heart valve surgery, like any other surgery, may have certain risks, such as:

• Irregular heart rhythm, called arrhythmia
• Stroke
• Bleeding
• Heart attack
• Infection
• A problem associated with a replacement valve

Know the Surgery Before the surgery, your doctor will guide you about:

• Continuing or discontinuing any medicine
• When to stop eating or drinking a night before surgery You may need to shave body hair at the site of incision.

During the surgery, the anesthetic doctor will give you medicine to sedate. You will be connected to a heart-lung machine, which will continue pumping the blood during the surgery. Then, the surgeon will perform the surgery. There are two types of minimally invasive surgery:

• Thoracoscopic surgery or mini-thoracotomy, where the surgeon uses one or more small incisions on the right side of the chest to carry out the procedure
• Robotic-assisted heart surgery: The surgeon carries out the procedure with the help of the robot

After the surgery, you may need to spend one day in the Intensive Care Unit and 2 days in stepdown ICU, where you will be monitored closely. You may be discharged within a week, depending on the severity of your condition.

Life after Minimally Invasive Heart Valve Surgery Go for regular heart checkups to detect any heart-related problems in the early stages. You need to adopt healthy lifestyle habits to keep your heart in the long run. These include:

• Consuming heart-healthy diet
• Do regular exercise
• Follow stress management techniques.
• Avoid smoking or consuming tobacco