Mitral Valve Disease

You may be experiencing shortness of breath, fatigue or even heart palpitations. Maybe you’ve been hospitalized.

Your diagnosis: mitral valve disease. Your mitral valve is leaking and causing a backward flow of blood into your heart.  This can raise your risk of irregular heartbeats, stroke and heart failure, which can be deadly.  

Life should be better. You may be a candidate for the minimally invasive Transcatheter MitraClip procedure, which is used to repair leaky mitral valves without open cardiac surgery.

Why am I feeling this way?

When working properly, your mitral valve ensures that blood flows in only one direction through the heart. But mitral regurgitation causes blood to leak backwards through the heart’s mitral valve. Mitral regurgitation is one of the most common types of heart valve insufficiency.
Many people who have mitral valve disease don’t know even they have it. That’s because it rarely causes any problems. But for some people, the leakage may spur symptoms that can get worse over time. These include:

• Chest pain
• Dizziness
• Anxiety
• Shortness of breath
• Fatigue
• Feeling that your heart is skipping a beat or beating too fast or too hard (palpitations)
As symptoms worsen, you may experience serious burdens on your quality of life.

Is the MitraClip procedure right for you?

You may be considered too high risk for conventional mitral valve repair or replacement due to existing conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, renal failure, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) or other healthcare concerns. 

The percutaneous MitraClip procedure could be the best solution for you.  Much less invasive than open-heart surgery, this procedure would involve accessing your mitral valve with a catheter that is guided through a vein in your leg to reach your heart. The treatment would work by clipping together a portion of the leaflets of your mitral valve in order to reduce the backflow of blood, which would allow your heart to pump blood more efficiently.   

Mitral valve disease can seriously impact your daily living. Your healthcare team is dedicated to providing an individualized treatment plan for you.