Heart Disease: Heart Valve Disease
According to the American Heart Association, about 5
million Americans are diagnosed with valvular heart disease each year.
What Is Valvular Heart Disease?
Heart valve
disease occurs when your heart's valves do
not work the way they should.
How Do Heart Valves Work?
Your heart valves lie at the exit of each of your four heart chambers and maintain one-way blood flow through your heart. The four heart valves make sure that blood always flows freely in a forward direction and that there is no backward leakage.
Blood flows from your right and left atria into your ventricles through the open mitral and tricuspid valves.
When the ventricles are full, the mitral and tricuspid valves shut. This prevents blood from flowing backward into the atria while the ventricles contract (squeeze).
As the ventricles begin to contract, the pulmonic and aortic valves are forced open and blood is pumped out of the ventricles through the open valves into the pulmonary artery toward the lungs, the aorta, and the body.
When the ventricles finish contracting and begin to relax, the aortic and pulmonic valves snap shut. These valves prevent blood from flowing back into the ventricles.
This pattern is repeated over and over, causing blood to flow continuously to the heart, lungs and body.
Next: What are the types of valve disease? »
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