Conditions Treated by Heart Surgery (2024)

For the heart to work well, blood must flow in only one direction. The heart's valves make this possible. Healthy valves open and close in a precise way as the heart pumps blood. Heart valve repair or replacement may be necessary if something happens to the valves that leads to problems with blood flow in the heart’s chambers.

Learn more about the different types of heart valve disease.

Heart valve repair surgery

Depending on the type of heart valve disease you have, there are several ways surgeons can repair a valve. For example, your surgeon may fix the flaps of your heart valve by patching tears or reattaching loose flaps. They may also use a balloon that stretches the opening of a valve and allows blood to flow through more effectively. They may also insert devices or stents to help valves that leak. The repair may be minimally invasive or require open-heart surgery.

Learn more about heart valve repair.

Heart valve replacement surgery

Sometimes faulty or diseased heart valves cannot be repaired and must be replaced. Your surgeon will replace the faulty or diseased valve with either a mechanical or a biological heart valve. Learn more about the difference between mechanical and biological heart valves.

Surgeons replace heart valves during open-heart surgery or with a minimally invasive procedure using a catheter — a thin tube threaded through a blood vessel to the heart. A common example of the procedure using a catheter is transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). TAVR, which is sometimes called transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), replaces the aortic valve to treat aortic stenosis, a condition in which the aortic valve is narrowed.