Connect
Mild Aortic Valve insufficiency
Hi everyone, I was diagnosed as a child with a heart murmur but within the week I was diagnosed with mild Aortic valve insufficiencies! Has anyone else? I have heart palpitations, shortness of breath, high blood pressure and severe edema. Dr says to keep taking my blood pressure medicine and he will see me back at his office in 6 months. Does anyone else have this problem?
Like
Helpful
HugInterested in more discussions like this? Go to the Heart & Blood Health Support Group.
Connect
https://www.healthline.com/health/aortic-insufficiency#treatment
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557428/
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000923
These should keep you busy for a while. As is always our advice here, stay in touch with your PCP and referred experts, and advocate for yourself if you feel you need more/better/different care.
The heart palpitations could be atrial fibrillation (AF), or they could be just often-ignored premature atrial contractions (PACs). Neither arrhythmia is serious, and they won't endanger you, at least not soon. The idea is to monitor and to make sure the condition isn't getting worse. These arrhythmias do tend to get worse across most/all patients, sometimes fairly quickly, like in a few months, but it can also take years, especially with good control by beta or calcium channel blockers and a mild anti-arrhtymic.
Note that if you have atrial fibrillation, you should almost certainly be placed on a DOAC (Daily Oral Anti-Coagulant). The risk for a stroke rises about six fold when we're dealing with any amount of fibrillation. Again, this would be confirmed by a PCP or your cardiologist, and usually done with a Holter Monitor worn at home for several days, or a Loop Recorder, or if you're currently fibrillating, with an ECG (electrocardiogram) using 12 leads.
Last thing, have you ever been checked for sleep apnea? It's worth a formal diagnosis unless you're already a CPAP user with known apnea. Sleep apnea, like hypertension, is often a silent killer (if you don't also snore and gag and gasp all night). My own AF came about because I had undiagnosed severe sleep apnea.