Mitral Valve Regurgitation – Medications

Transcript

Let’s talk about treatment options for mitral regurgitation. Mitral regurgitation can be divided into medication management and procedures. With medication, we have to look at a few things. We have to make sure the blood pressure is under control. A high blood pressure from diet or other lifestyle issues can cause damage to the mitral valve. The mitral valve has to pump blood across the heart and under high blood pressures, it’s more difficult and it causes damage to the valve. So we need to manage the blood pressure, that’s one of the most important things. The next issue is diuretics. Making sure the heart is not overwhelmed with too much volume, too much pressure. So we would give diuretics to the patient to lower pressures, to lower volume so the mitral valve is not adversely affected. Those are our main medications, diuretics and blood pressure medications. Another one would be controlling the heart rate. If there’s an arrhythmia and the heart is beating too fast, well, that puts pressure on the mitral valve and the mitral valve cannot function properly during times of arrhythmias. So we would give medications to slow down the heart rate or to regulate the rhythm of the heart so that the mitral valve and the leakiness of the valve is not adversely affected.