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Aortic Stenosis »

What is aortic stenosis?

Aortic stenosis is abnormal narrowing of the aortic valve. A number of conditions cause disease resulting in narrowing of the aortic valve. When the degree of narrowing becomes significant enough to impede the flow of blood from the left ventricle to the arteries, heart problems develop. The basic mechanism is as follows:

• The heart is a muscular pump with four chambers and four heart valves.
• The upper chambers, the right atrium and left atrium (atria - plural for atrium), are thin walled filling chambers.
• Blood flows from the right and left atria across the tricuspid and mitral valves into the lower chambers (right and left ventricles).
• The right and left ventricles have thick muscular walls for pumping blood across the pulmonic and aortic valves into the circulation.
• Heart valves are thin leaflets of tissue which open and close at the proper time during each heart beat cycle...

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