Heart Valve

Repairing or Replacing Your Heart Valve

At Aurora BayCare, our heart care team will focus on repairing your heart valve whenever possible. Valve repair often provides the best long-term outcome. Heart valve repair provides fewer risks, compared to heart valve replacement, and does not require long-term use of blood thinners after surgery.

When your aortic valve is too damaged, a replacement valve is generally needed. Patients who need an aortic valve replacement suffer from one of two conditions:

• Aortic valve stenosis or aortic stenosis: Stenosis is the term for a valve that doesn’t open properly. When the valve doesn’t open all the way, less blood flows through and your body doesn’t get as much oxygenated blood as it should. Aortic stenosis is a narrowing of the valve in your aorta, the main artery branching off your heart.
• Aortic stenosis commonly develops with age, although some people have aortic stenosis because they had a malformed valve at birth. Symptoms can include chest pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, chest tightness, fainting, or a reduced tolerance for exercise.
• Aortic valve regurgitation or insufficiency: heart valve doesn't properly close and allows blood to leak backwards through the valve. Symptoms often don’t occur until heart failure develops—a forceful pulse, pain in the chest, fainting or shortness of breath.

During a heart valve replacement, your diseased valve will be removed and replaced with either a mechanical or tissue valve.

• Mechanical Valves. A mechanical valve is designed to simulate the natural heart valve. Patients with a mechanical valve replacement will need to take blood thinners to lower the risk of blood clots.
• Tissue Valves. A tissue valve is made from animal tissue and then chemically treated to prepare it for human use. Unlike mechanical valves, patients that receive tissue valves do not have to take anticoagulants long term. Because these valves are made from natural tissue, they do not last as long as mechanical valves.

Your surgeon will review your condition and risk factors with you, and help you decide whether valve repair or heart valve replacement is your best option.

Sutureless Valve Replacement

If you need an aortic valve replacement, you may be a candidate for a new class of tissue valve—one that can be secured without stitches. These 100% sutureless valves are self-anchoring, similar to TAVI. A sutureless option significantly reduces surgery time, cutting your overall surgical risk. These valves offer traditional valve durability with improved performance in a lower profile design.

Aurora BayCare is leading the way with innovative therapies. We are the first in the region to offer the Perceval sutureless aortic valve replacement.

Benefits include:

• Shorter time in surgery
• Less time on the heart-lung bypass machine
• Side effects from surgery may be reduced
• No need to use long-term blood thinners after surgery

Heart Valve Specialists

Aurora BayCare doctors in the Heart Valve Center have extensive experience treating people with heart valve disease. Talk to us for a wider range of treatment options, access to the latest clinical research, and industry-leading outcomes.