Do leaky heart valves have to be replaced or repaired?
Answer Hi Connie, I assume you’re talking about (MVP) Mitral Valve prolapse and thickening of aortic valves and the like. Do you have a specific condition involving something like this? It’s generally referred to as valvular heart disease and there are several different types of corrective surgeries to replace and repair these problems. If a patient has mitral valve prolapse with minimal regurgitation of blood flow, they can lead normal lives with no intervention. If the MVP regurgitation is more than 50-60% than this causes a significant problem with backwards blood flow in the heart and their prognosis is usually poor. 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. One common pro
