Valve Surgery
What is Valve Surgery?
Valve surgery is used to correct issues and defects in your heart’s four valves. These valves direct the flow of blood through the heart, including the aortic, mitral, pulmonary and tricuspid valves.
If one or more valves do not open or close properly, the heart has to work harder to pump blood and can weaken your heart muscle over time. It can cause symptoms like shortness of breath, weakness or irregular heartbeats (arrhythmias).
Who Is a Candidate for Valve Surgery?
Valve surgery should be considered when your symptoms are not relieved by medicine or nonsurgical balloon valvuloplasty, an interventional cardiology procedure. Your surgeon will determine the best type of valve surgery for you based upon your condition and other health factors.
Types of Valve Surgery
Surgeons repair valves whenever possible and replace those that cannot be repaired with an artificial valve, made from animal tissue (cow or pig), metal or carbon. Our nationally acclaimed heart surgery teams have the expertise to perform a variety of minimally invasive and open valve surgeries, including:
- Aortic valve replacement
- Mitral valve repair or replacement
- Tricuspid valve repair or replacement
- Pulmonic valve surgery with replacement with mechanical or biological valve
- Combined valve, coronary and atrial fibrillation surgery
- Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR): minimally invasive procedure for patients with critical aortic stenosis (AS)
- Minimally invasive aortic and mitral valve surgeries, including the MitraClip implant device for people with severe mitral valve regurgitation (MR)
- Other structural procedures
Why Choose Hackensack Meridian Health for Your Care
Hackensack University Medical Center and Jersey Shore University Medical Center were named High Performing hospitals for Aortic Valve Surgery by U.S. News & World Report in 2023. Jersey Shore University Medical Center and Hackensack University Medical Center received 3-Star awards for valve procedures from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
Jersey Shore University Medical Center and Hackensack University Medical Center have earned 3-star ratings from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons for the quality of Mitral Valve Replacement or Repair and Aortic Valve Replacement (Hackensack) and Aortic Valve Replacement combined with CABG (Jersey Shore).
Hackensack University Medical Center is one of the few hospitals in the nation to use MitraClip pairing with fusion imaging, a revolutionary approach to treating people with severely advanced heart failure.
Cardiac experts at Jersey Shore University Medical Center are experienced leaders in using MitraClip, having performed more procedures in 2021 than any other hospital in New York and New Jersey.
