{"id":20594,"date":"2016-06-20T16:03:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T21:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=20594"},"modified":"2025-06-27T01:23:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T06:23:50","slug":"genetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2016\/06\/20\/genetics\/","title":{"rendered":"Surgeon Q&#038;A: &#8220;Is Heart Valve Disease Genetic?&#8221; asks Sue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A great question from Sue came in regarding genetics and heart valve disease. She asked me, &#8220;Adam &#8211; Is heart valve disease genetic or is there a tendency to develop valvular disease in the later years of life?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To answer Sue&#8217;s question, I was very lucky to\u00a0interview\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\">Dr. Patrick McCarthy<\/a>, the chief of cardiac surgery and executive director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute at Northwestern Medicine. If you didn&#8217;t know, Dr. McCarthy is a valve specialist having performed over 4,000 heart valve procedures. At our community, Dr. McCarthy has successfully treated many patients as you can see by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\">200+ patient testimonials posted here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2CHLzWyJKVw?rel=0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I hope that helped Sue (and perhaps you) learn more about the genetics associated with heart valve disease. Many thanks to Sue for her question and a special thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Patrick-McCarthy-Chicago-Illinois.php\">Dr. McCarthy<\/a> for sharing his clinical experiences and research with our community.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>And&#8230; As Dr. McCarthy suggests&#8230; If someone in your close family has a bicuspid aortic valve&#8230; Please&#8230; Please get screened!!!<\/p>\n<p>Related Links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2019\/03\/14\/bicuspid-aortic-valves-genetics\/\">Bicuspid Aortic Valve Genetics: Maternal or Paternal?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2022\/01\/26\/bicuspid-aortic-screening\/\">Family Screening for Bicuspid Aortic Valves: What Should You Know?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the hearing impaired members of our community, I have provided a written transcript below.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: Hi, everybody! It&#8217;s Adam with heartvalvesurgery.com. Today, we&#8217;re at the Heart Valve Summit in Chicago, Illinois. I&#8217;m talking with Dr. Patrick McCarthy. Dr. McCarthy, thanks for being with us.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. McCarthy: Thank you, Adam.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: Dr. McCarthy is the Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Northwestern Medicine. He&#8217;s also the Executive Director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. Dr. McCarthy&#8217;s going to answer Sue Webb-Meyer&#8217;s question that she just submitted at our Facebook page. She asks, &#8220;Is heart valve disease genetic or is there a tendency to develop valvular disease in the later years of life?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/patrick-mccarthy-northwestern-surgeon-md.jpg\" width=\"550\" height=\"358\" \/>Dr. Patrick McCarthy &#8211; Heart Surgeon<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Dr. McCarthy: \u00a0That&#8217;s a good question and actually it&#8217;s a very common question that we have to deal with. There&#8217;s really two scenarios: one is that there&#8217;s a specific condition called bicuspid aortic valve disease, which you know very well, Adam, because you had that. That actually can run in families. It&#8217;s in about 2% of the population so guys like me see it every day.<\/p>\n<p>When that happens, about 20%, so one out of five, runs in the family. I talk to patients and they say my brother had this operation or my nephew or something like that. We actually recommend screening family members with that now. We recommend if a patient has a bicuspid aorta valve, that first degree relatives, which means close relatives, get an ECO. That one is clearly genetic.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/bicuspid-aortic-valve.gif\" width=\"400\" height=\"264\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Bicuspid Aortic Valve<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The other ones, like mitral valve disease, mitral valve prolapse, where you break the strings on the valve and the chords, we&#8217;re a little suspicious that someday we may show that that one is genetic, but it hasn&#8217;t been shown. If we ever show it and can prove it, I&#8217;ll win the Nobel Prize. We&#8217;re suspicious but we don&#8217;t know about that one.<\/p>\n<p>The 95-year old, in a sense that is arthrosclerosis that is developing and things like that can run in the families, like heart attacks. Sometimes you see people and there&#8217;s been valve disease at an elderly age but that one is much less common.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: \u00a0Well Dr. McCarthy, thanks again for all your help and support of our community and the great care you&#8217;re providing to our patients.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. McCarthy: Thanks for taking care of these patients, too, Adam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bicuspid-aortic-valve"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42241,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20594\/revisions\/42241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}