Disease of The Aortic Valve
There are two protypical processes that can affect the aortic valve - aortic stenosis in which the valve fails to open fully, thereby obstructing blood flow out from the heart, and aortic insufficiency, also called aortic regurgitation, in which the aortic valve is incompetent and blood flows passively back to the heart in the wrong direction. These two conditions frequently co-exist.
- Common causes of aortic stenosis include rheumatic fever, degenerative calcification, and congenital diseases such as bicuspid aortic valve.
- Common causes of aortic regurgitation include dilation of the aorta, previous rheumatic fever, infection, i.e. infective endocarditis, myxomatous degeneration of the aortic valve, and Marfan's syndrome.
Read more about this topic: Aortic Valve
Famous quotes containing the words disease of and/or disease:
“His poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-shunned poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“And this disease that was Swann’s love had so multiplied, it was so intimately tied to all of Swann’s habits, to all his acts, to his thoughts, to his health, to his sleep, to his life, even to what he desired for his afterlife, his love was so much a part of him that it could not be extracted from him without destroying him entirely: as is said in surgery, his love was inoperable.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)