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Have Shortness Of Breath While Doing Anything. Heart Is Under Control. Remedy?
In the last 9 months l have had a mitral valve repair , atrial flutter that lead to a blood clot in my heart. Two weeks ago I had an ablation that was meant to correct my irregular heart rate . From all accounts my heart rate has dropped from its peak of 220 BPM to 80-90, but despite this l am still experiencing shortness of breath when l do almost anything. It happens when I walk, climb stairs, take a hot shower, after eating, when lying down of an evening to try and go to sleep, when it is humid or hot outside. To say the least I am at the end of my tether and need to know is there anything more than seeing my cardiologist that l can do. Sould l request a stress test while hooked up to a monitor to understand what my heart is doing. Thanks, Stuart
Thu, 14 Mar 2013
Hi friend,
Welcome to Health Care Magic
This is left sided heart failure.
The function of the valve has to be checked - leak, block and so on...X-ray Chest, ECHOcardiogram and others are in order.
Your coronaries were normal?
Stress may only show your limitation
See your doctor / get yourself investigated.
Take care
Wishing speedy recovery
God bless
Good luck
Welcome to Health Care Magic
This is left sided heart failure.
The function of the valve has to be checked - leak, block and so on...X-ray Chest, ECHOcardiogram and others are in order.
Your coronaries were normal?
Stress may only show your limitation
See your doctor / get yourself investigated.
Take care
Wishing speedy recovery
God bless
Good luck
I find this answer helpful
Hello
Welcome to health care magic
Dear patient, functional recovery after mitral valve repair surgery depends up on what was the functional status of the heart before surgery i.e wheather your heart muscle function which we measure in terms of ejection fraction was good or not , if ejection fraction before surgery was good i.e more than 50%, then the chances of developing breathlessness after surgery are very less, if the heart functioning was poor before surgery i.e ejection fraction was less than 50% then it will take time for the heart functioning to recover towards normalcy after mitral valve repair surgery . second possibility is that valve dysfunction in the form of mitral regurgitation even after repair has again taken place which can happen after such surgeries and thirdly if you have risk factors for coronary artery disease like age more than 50 years, male sex, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity or smoking then your breathlessness due to daily living activities could be due to acute coronary syndromes occuring with minimal exertion or ischaemic cardiomyopathy and stress testing can help in detecting this one . however before goining for stress testing let your cardiologist check what is the functional status of your heart i.e ejection fraction, and competency of your repaired mitral valve by doing an echocardiography and let him first optemise the heart failure symptoms , then you can also go for stress testing. At present you need to see your cardiologist for your symptoms which indicate chronic heart failure
wish you speedy recovery
Thanks
Dr Arshad
Welcome to health care magic
Dear patient, functional recovery after mitral valve repair surgery depends up on what was the functional status of the heart before surgery i.e wheather your heart muscle function which we measure in terms of ejection fraction was good or not , if ejection fraction before surgery was good i.e more than 50%, then the chances of developing breathlessness after surgery are very less, if the heart functioning was poor before surgery i.e ejection fraction was less than 50% then it will take time for the heart functioning to recover towards normalcy after mitral valve repair surgery . second possibility is that valve dysfunction in the form of mitral regurgitation even after repair has again taken place which can happen after such surgeries and thirdly if you have risk factors for coronary artery disease like age more than 50 years, male sex, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity or smoking then your breathlessness due to daily living activities could be due to acute coronary syndromes occuring with minimal exertion or ischaemic cardiomyopathy and stress testing can help in detecting this one . however before goining for stress testing let your cardiologist check what is the functional status of your heart i.e ejection fraction, and competency of your repaired mitral valve by doing an echocardiography and let him first optemise the heart failure symptoms , then you can also go for stress testing. At present you need to see your cardiologist for your symptoms which indicate chronic heart failure
wish you speedy recovery
Thanks
Dr Arshad
I find this answer helpful
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