Tricuspid valve: Repair and tricuspid valve replacement can help

Tricuspid valve repair and tricuspid valve replacement can help improve blood flow and reduce symptoms of heart valve disease. Tricuspid valve repair or replacement may be done as open-heart surgery or as minimally invasive heart surgery. Sometimes, tricuspid valve disease may be treated with a catheter-based procedure. The tricuspid valve is complex anatomically, lying adjacent to important anatomic structures such as the right coronary artery and the atrioventricular node, and is the passageway for permanent pacemaker leads into the right ventricle. An appreciation of the complex and variable anatomy of the tricuspid valve is essential to unraveling the pathophysiology of tricuspid regurgitation. A greater appreciation of normal and abnormal anatomy is important as new methods of treating the tricuspid regurgitation are developed. This review of tricuspid valve and right heart anatomy is followed by a discussion of the possible pathophysiology of secondary (functional) tricuspid regurgitation. The tricuspid valve is one of the four main valves of the heart and is located between the right atrium and the right ventricle. As an atrioventricular (AV) valve, it regulates the flow of blood from the right atrium into the right ventricle and prevents backflow during ventricular contraction.