Could You Have Heart Disease, and Not Know About It?
If you have been experiencing fatigue, high blood pressure, shortness of breath, leg cramping, or chest pain/tightness, you could have a heart condition and should see your doctor for evaluation.
About 60 million people, or 20 to 25 percent of adults in the United States, suffer from structural heart defects. These heart defects include diseases of the heart valves (valvular).
What Is Structural Heart Valve Disease (SHD)?
Heart valves are important in order to maintain normal blood flow through the heart. We each have four valves in our heart:
- Mitral
- Aortic
- Tricuspid
- Pulmonary
Each heart valve plays a different role in providing healthy blood circulation, delivering blood, oxygen and nutrients to all tissue throughout the body. If these valves become hardened and narrow (stenotic), they cannot open fully, and blood flow is restricted. These valves may be damaged due to:
- Congenital Defects
- Trauma (injury to the chest)
- Age-related Changes to the Heart
- Heart Infection (endocarditis, rheumatic fever)
- Rare Conditions/Disease (Marfan syndrome, Lupus, etc.)
Any of these valves may also suffer from “regurgitation”. This occurs when a valve does not close tightly, allowing blood to leak back into the heart chamber it was just pumped from. This can result in patients feeling:
- Fatigue and weakness, especially when increasing your activity level
- Swollen ankles and feet
- Shortness of breath when exercising
- Shortness of breath when you lie down
- Irregular pulse
- Chest pain, discomfort or tightness, increasing during exercise
- Palpitations (heart fluttering)
- Heart murmur
It is important that issues involving the functioning of heart valves are diagnosed and treated by your physician.
Echocardiograms Can Detect Structural Heart Disease of the Valves
Valvular SHD can be diagnosed using an echocardiogram. The echocardiogram directs sound waves at your heart from a wand-like device, or transducer, held on your chest. This produces video images of your heart in motion, in real-time, as it is pumping blood.
Echocardiograms allow doctors to look at the heart valves in motion to determine if any are malfunctioning. In many cases, an echocardiogram can help doctors determine the cause and severity of heart valve conditions.
Patients are usually very comfortable during an echocardiogram, mostly because it is totally non-invasive, requiring no surgery.
Not only is echocardiography used as a diagnostic tool to reveal physiological and anatomical abnormalities of the heart functioning in real time, it can also be used during actual heart surgery to monitor blood flow in the heart. Echocardiography is also often used to monitor cardiac blood flow after heart surgery.
The echocardiogram is an extremely important tool for diagnosing structural heart disease of the valves. It is non-invasive, and provides clear video showing how effectively the heart is pumping blood through each of the four heart chambers.
If you are noticing any of the signs of heart disease, please contact your doctor for a complete evaluation of the condition of your heart. If you are in South Carolina, and you find you need an echocardiogram to determine a clear diagnosis of valvular structural heart disease, contact South Carolina Internal Medicine Associates and Rehabilitation at (803) 749-1111 for comprehensive, compassionate, and truly patient centered care.
