Mitral Stenosis – The Faltering Heart Disease

Mitral stenosis is also referred to as mitral valve stenosis and it is the condition wherein the mitral valve opening of the heart narrows. And when that happens, the blood coming from the left atrium down to the left ventricle flows with increased resistance. Overall, the flow of blood is reduced and the blood pressure in the left atrium is increased causing it to enlarge. The left atrium will begin to beat rapidly and over time, it will become irregular and result in atrial fibrillation.

Severe mitral stenosis will cause increase pressure in the lung’s blood vessels. Fluid will start to accumulate in the lungs causing a reduced level of oxygen in the blood. A pregnant woman suffering from mitral stenosis will develop heart failure very rapidly.

Causes of Mitral Stenosis :
The most common cause of mitral stenosis is rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever usually occurs during childhood and it follows an untreated scarlet fever or strep throat. However, rheumatic fever is treated long before with antibiotics so it is not anymore seen in children of North America, Western Europe, and Australasia. This would further connote that mitral stenosis is more likely to be seen in older individuals only.

There are also cases of congenital mitral stenosis. Babies with this condition may require surgery soon after birth because statistics show that most of these babies don’t live beyond the age of two.

Symptoms of Mitral Stenosis :
The milder cases of mitral stenosis don’t usually produce symptoms. People can go on with their lives normally without feeling anything wrong in their bodies. But this doesn’t mean that is should be ignored and leave untreated.

For people who are developing signs, they would have palpitations. Palpitations are the abnormal awareness of one’s heartbeat. They would also get tired easily and experience shortness of breath. Most of the time, they would feel these after an extraneous physical activity. But as the disease progresses, they would feel it even as they rest. In line with this, some patients won’t be able to breath properly lying flat on their backs. They have to be propped up in pillows, sitting upright, or standing.

Patients with severe cases of mitral stenosis may have a flush seen in their cheeks. These are called mitral facies and are caused by the lowered level of oxygen in the blood, coupled with the lung’s high blood pressure. There are also instances that they would cough out blood because either a vein or a capillary had burst.

Diagnosing Mitral Stenosis :
A stethoscope should be enough to detect this disease because the heart will usually do some characteristic murmuring. A normal person’s blood passes silently through the valve. But when there’s sound, there’s a problem inside.

But to make the diagnosis more accurate, and ECG test may be requested. The chest x-ray of the patient may reveal an abnormally big left atrium. Echocardiography is also used to generate an image of the heart through an ultrasound wave.

Treatment of Mitral Stenosis :
Drugs are the first line of cure for people with mitral stenosis. Diuretics, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers and anticoagulants are all used. Diuretics remove excess fluid in the body. And it can also reduce the blood pressure in the lungs. Both beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers control the rhythms of the heart. Anticoagulants, on the other hand, prevent blood clots leading to atrial fibrillation.

Should drugs fail, the valve itself may need to be repaired or totally replaced. To repair the valve, it is stretched out to make it bigger with the balloon valvuloplasty procedure. But if the doctor deemed that this procedure wouldn’t do the patient any good, a heart surgery may be done instead to replace the mitral valve with an artificial one.