Thank you. This is all relatively new to me, as I was diagnosed 18 months ago with a 4.4 dilation...unchanged since then. While my cardiologist let's me go on hiking/walking vacations, he suggested I stop high intensity interval workouts at my spin class. I'm not sure I understand the difference...meeting with him next week to learn more. Btw, is this forum monitored by Mayo staff and do they ever offer their opinions? Just joined last week...

I'm surprised that s/he said you have no restrictions. It seems like every source I've encountered indicates you should avoid straining (valsalva maneuver -- holding your breath to poop or lift heavy weights). That apparently causes your blood pressure to spike significantly.

That said, I gather 4.3 (same size as mine) is relatively small. I've seen comforting data on absolute risk of dissection at that size. It's harder to get data on growth rates. Apparently they are all over the place and an average doesn't tell you much because there is so much variability. I was just poking around and turned up this article: https://cardiothoracicsurgery.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13019-022-01761-6 which indicates average growth rate for most people could be like .01cm/year. If we get lucky and have 0.01cm/year, then we have 70 years until we reach 5.0 cm where surgery seems to be discussed. 🙂 Unfortunately, I am not in the medical community and can't evaluate whether the study is a good one and even in this study, growth rates are all over the place. And who knows if we'll get the average. Fingers crossed.