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Heart valve disease is a lifelong condition. See your doctor regularly for ongoing care and to determine how this condition may affect pregnancy.

To prevent heart valve disease caused by rheumatic fever, see your doctor if you have signs of a strep infection. Heart-healthy eating, physical activity, other heart-healthy lifestyle changes, and medicines aimed at preventing a heart attack, high blood pressure, or heart failure also may help prevent heart valve disease.

Your doctor will diagnose heart valve disease based on your medical and family histories, a physical exam, and results from one or more tests: electrocardiogram (EKG), chest x ray, echocardiography, cardiac catheterization, stress testing, and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The main sign of heart valve disease is an unusual heartbeat sound called a heart murmur.

Risk factors for heart valve disease include older age and a history of infective endocarditis, rheumatic fever, heart attack, or heart failure. You’re also at higher risk for heart valve disease if you have risk factors for coronary heart disease or were born with a certain aortic valve condition.

Heart conditions and other disorders, age-related changes, rheumatic fever, or infections can cause acquired heart valve disease. These factors change the shape or flexibility of once-normal heart valves. The cause of congenital heart valve disease isn't know.

Heart valve disease occurs if one or more of your heart valves don't work well. The heart has four valves—the tricuspid, pulmonary, mitral, and aortic valves—that make sure blood flows in the right direction through your heart’s four chambers and to the rest of your body.

If you are living with heart failure, you should follow your lifelong treatment plan, take steps to prevent heart failure from getting worse, plan ahead, and obtain emotional support.

You can take action to prevent heart disease and heart failure by avoiding illegal drugs, being physically active, following a heart-healthy eating plan, quitting smoking, and maintaining a healthy weight.

Your doctor will diagnose heart failure based on your medical and family histories, a physical exam, and results from one or more tests: electrocardiogram (EKG), chest x ray, B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) blood test, echocardiography, Doppler ultrasound, Holter monitor, nuclear heart scan, cardiac catheterization, coronary angiography, stress testing, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and thyroid function tests.