《Valve Disease》.pdfVIP

Valve Disease | Share Every time your heart beats, blood flows into, through, and out of your heart. In fact, your heart moves about 100 gallons (379 liters) of blood through your body every hour. Blood is pumped through your heart in only one direction. Heart valves play key roles in this one-way blood flow, opening and closing with each heartbeat. Pressure changes behind and in front of the valves allow them to open their flap-like doors (called cusps or leaflets) at just the right time, then close them tightly to prevent a backflow of blood. There are 4 valves in the heart:  Tricuspid valve  Pulmonary valve  Mitral valve  Aortic valve Blood without oxygen returns from the body and flows into the hearts upper-right chamber (the right atrium). From there, it is forced through the tricuspid valve into the lower-right chamber (the right ventricle). The right ventricle pumps the blood through the pulmonary valve and into the lungs. While in the lungs, the blood picks up oxygen. As the right ventricle is preparing to push blood through the pulmonary valve, the tricuspid valve closes to stop blood from flowing back into the right atrium. Oxygen-rich blood returning from the lungs flows into the upper-left chamber (the left atrium). This blood is forced through the mitral valve into the lower-left chamber (the left ventricle)—with the mitral valve sealing off to stop the backflow of blood. At the same time that the right ventricle is pumping the blood without oxygen into the lungs, the left ventricle is pushing the blood with oxygen through the aortic valve and on to all of the bodys organs. Two types of problems can disrupt blood flow though the valves: regurgi