The aortic, mitral, pulmonary, and tricuspid valves all make up your heart. These valves facilitate the passage of blood through the heart's chambers and into the rest of the body. Valves are vulnerable to a number of medical conditions that may influence how they work and cause narrowing or leaking, which disturbs regular blood flow patterns.

This causes a variety of symptoms, including progressive shortness of breath, swelling in the legs, chest pain, fatigue , palpitations dizziness, or blackouts, making it difficult for the patient to carry out daily tasks, necessitating frequent hospital stays, and even increasing the risk of death from heart failure and its related complications.

Your body needs time to heal after having a heart valve replaced, which is a significant treatment. How long it takes frequently relies onyour health before the replacement and the kind of surgery you have—minimally invasive versus open heart.

Why do you need it?

The heart's valves are in charge of letting blood filled with nutrients pass through the chambers of your heart. After allowing blood to enter, each valve should totally close. Heart valves with the disease don't always do their jobs as well as they should. You may then experience the symptoms mentioned above.

Before leaving the hospital:

You will receive comprehensive instructions for exercise, medicine, continued wound care, and returning to normal activities before you leave the hospital. Additionally, you'll be urged to enrol in a cardiac rehabilitation program, which is a special program designed to support you at every stage of your recovery and return to normal activities. Watch this brief video to learn more about cardiac rehabilitation.

Daily life activities: 

Most likely, you'll start feeling better almost immediately. Your condition will gradually get better, and you'll start to feel a little bit better every day. However, to get the most out of your new or repaired heart valve, you'll need to change several aspects of your lifestyle.

You can resume work-related activities as soon as your focus, self-assurance, and physical capabilities permit you to do so. The majority of people resume light office work after six weeks and heavy work after three months.

Keep it simple and start with the things you enjoy doing most. Light cooking, flower arranging, cleaning, dusting, dishwashing, and laundry can all be started early. Assign your family the more difficult tasks.

It's normal to lose interest in sexual activity for a while, but like other activities, you should be back to normal at week three. Sex requires roughly the same amount of energy as climbing two flights of stairs, and you're generally ready to ease back into this from that point.

You should take some precautions to ensure that your heart valve illness does not recur. Visit your doctor for follow-up treatment, don't forget. He or she will provide you with instructions on how to take your medication, when to take it, what activities you can engage in, and which ones you should avoid.

Eating habits: 

You will need to concentrate on eating a nutritious diet after your valve surgery. This will facilitate your body's healing process, lower your risk of problems, and help you recover quickly.

A diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds has been shown in numerous studies to lower the risk of heart disease. Your body receives a lot of heart-protective elements from a balanced diet, including vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and dietary fibre.However,with certain types of anticoagulant medications [needed to keep metallic heart valves working fine and free from clots ]there will be need to avoid green leafy vegetables and certain other concurrent medicines will need to be used with caution. Persons on such anticoagulants will need to check their status of anticoagulation by doing regular blood tests.

Travel:

You ought to be able to take pleasure in visiting many of the locations you did before your operation once you've recovered. But keep in mind that some places might expose you to bacteria and other microbes that could be harmful to your heart. If you're considering a journey to a far-off or tropical location, consult your doctor first.

Conclusion:

After having a heart valve fixed, you might feel as though you need to drastically alter your way of living. Several weeks or months following your operation, you'll likely continue to recover physically and feel considerably better overall. You might want to talk more about some of this information with your doctor as you start to feel better.