Heart Valve Disease: Causes

Heart conditions and other disorders, age-related changes, rheumatic fever, and infections can cause acquired heart valve disease, which occurs later in life after birth. These factors change the shape or flexibility of once-normal valves.

Heart valves can be stretched and distorted by:

• Damage and scar tissue due to a heart attack or injury to the heart.

• Advanced high blood pressure and heart failure, which can enlarge the heart or the main arteries.

• Narrowing of the aorta due to the buildup of a plaque inside the artery, which is the main artery that carries oxygen-rich blood to the body.

Congenital heart valve defects occur before birth as the heart is forming. The cause of these types of defects is not known.

This information has been adapted from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.