There is a flap between the upper and lower chambers of the right side of your heart. As the blood flows from the upper heart chamber to the lower, this flap ensures its direction doesn’t get reversed. If this valve start leaking or gets stiff, it can lead to severe heart complications that can even prove fatal.
Major complications that happen due to the improper functioning of the tricuspid valve are sudden heart failure which can even turn life-threatening. Other complications you can experience related to valve complications are tricuspid regurgitation or stenosis. You may also get Tricuspid atresia, which is a birth defect found in babies. If you have any of these complications, your body will start giving symptoms and indicate that it is time to visit the best heart specialist in your area.
What Happens When Your Tricuspid Valve Is Not Functioning Well
If there is some flaw in how your valve works, your body will start showing symptoms. Some of the signs you will experience are:
- You will experience more fatigue than usual and will not actively do your routine tasks.
- Your heart will show an unusual rhythm, beating fast or extremely slow within a short span of time.
- Another symptom you might experience is murmuring of your heart. You will experience a whooshing sound like a turbulent happening inside your heart.
- Other symptoms include shortness of breath and chest heaviness accompanied by unbearable pain.
Apart from these symptoms, people experience their bodies getting abnormally cold and fluctuations in their blood pressure. If you see any of these symptoms, consider them as red flags and immediately start looking for a heart specialist to take timely treatment. Let us discuss what can go wrong if you have a valve not working as it should.
Effects Of An Inefficient Tricuspid Valve
- You become more prone to bacterial infections and catch rheumatic fever which causes significant discomfort and slowly damages your heart chambers.
- Multiple genetic disorders, like rheumatoid arthritis, are also a result of this valve malfunctioning. It is an auto-immune disease that causes swelling or inflammation in your joints, due to which they experience unbearable pain.
- Your heart chambers may get infected due to this, which can turn life-threatening if you do not find a solution to it. This condition is called endocarditis and can only get treated by a proficient expert.
- There are other heart health issues like disrupted rhythm, fluctuating blood pressure and more, which arise only because your tricuspid valve is not doing its job well.
The early signs of this issue may not get recognized on time. But you will start seeing significant effects in your body after some time. Whenever you feel there is something unusual happening, contact your doctor immediately and get the treatment on time.