Heart Valve Disease: Treatment

To relieve the symptoms of heart conditions related to heart valve disease, your doctor may ask you to quit smoking and follow a healthy eating plan low in salt, cholesterol, and fat.

Your doctor also may ask you to limit physical activities that make you unusually short of breath and fatigued. He or she also may ask that you limit competitive athletic activity, even if the activity doesn't leave you unusually short of breath or fatigued.

Your doctor may prescribe medicines to help prevent or treat other related heart conditions, such as heart failure, high blood pressure, irregular heartbeats, coronary artery disease (CAD), and life-threatening blood clots. Heart valve disease can cause these conditions or worsen them.

People who have heart valve disease are commonly prescribed medicines to:

• Treat heart failure. Heart failure medicines widen blood vessels and rid the body of too much fluid.

• Lower blood pressure or blood cholesterol levels.

• Prevent irregular heartbeats.

• Thin the blood and prevent clots (for people who have man-made valves). These medicines also are prescribed for mitral stenosis or other valve defects that make you prone to developing blood clots.

In more severe cases, your doctor may recommend repairing or replacing your heart valve(s), even if you do not yet have symptoms of heart valve disease. This can prevent lasting damage to your heart and sudden death.

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